On a rainy morning in March, 25 folding chairs were set out on the floor of Meadow Lane, a gourmet market in Lower Manhattan that’s usually filled with influencers, Tribeca moms, and financiers picking up lunch. Today, the site belonged to McKinsey & Company.
The consultants are the ones who had asked for the meeting. They wanted to know how Meadow Lane had become such a thriving business in such a short time. They shook out their umbrellas and found their places among the artisan biscuits, seaweed drinks and carefully arranged jars of honey.
Sammy Nussdorf, the store’s 29-year-old owner, watched them settle in. Then he started talking.
He told the consultants about the long purgatory he had endured before opening for business. He told them about the $65 olive oil and the $12 chicken salad. He told them about the kitchen’s struggles to keep up with demand. He even told them about the poorly cooked chicken nuggets that, to their horror, became international news. When he finished, the consultants had questions.
Why buy Mexican Coke?
Nussdorf said he wanted an eclectic mix, rather than the usual healthcare market monoculture.
How did he choose the brands for his shelves?
He had spent a year testing products before opening, he said. And he made room for new products by not charging new indie brands a so-called slotting fee, unlike so many other retailers.
Has social media helped?
Oh, yes. In fact, he considered his TikTok followers something like partners in the business.
Satisfied, the consultants filled bags with produce and snacks before thanking him for his time and heading back into the rain.
On the morning of the confab, Meadow Lane had been open for 90 days. In that time, Nussdorf said, the store had served 80,000 customers while generating $3 million in revenue. On any given day, he said, more than 1,000 people passed through the 2,000-square-foot space on Greenwich Street.
“Running a business like this in a place like New York is a nightmare,” he said. “I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. But it’s so good.”
A child of wealth
He grew up on the Upper East Side, just across Fifth Avenue from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is the youngest son of Glenn Nussdorf, CEO of a family business, Quality King Distributors, a multibillion-dollar distributor of health and beauty products and prescription drugs.
Forbes has ranked the Nussdorf family among the 150 richest families in America. Sammy’s father, who keeps a low public profile, has asked to be removed from the list.
“My family and I, we never talked about money,” Sammy said. “We never discussed inheritance, assets, values, anything. I have no idea. I can guess if I wanted to, but I don’t care.”
Nussdorf cut stems and arranged flowers (Japanese sweet peas and alliums) in the studio off the main floor on Meadow Lane as he talked about finding his way. He struggled academically during his years at Columbia Grammar and Prep, a private school on the Upper West Side. By his own account, he was a party kid who stayed out in the clubs until 5 in the morning on school nights when he was 14.
He started a food Instagram in high school documenting the Bolognese sauce and aglio e olio he made from scratch. A sociology major at New York University, he hosted dinner parties in his first apartment.
Three blocks from where he lived, his father had a family investment office, Spring St. Group, and Sammy started working there in the summers. By the time he graduated in 2019, he was well versed in venture capital. Soon enough, he took on management duties.
“Nepotism gave me the privilege of being in that position,” he said. “But the money that opened Meadow Lane is money I made in VC” He paused. “A lot of people didn’t believe it.”
While working in finance, he became serious about a hobby – flower arrangements. He woke up at 5 a.m. to buy flowers at the markets along West 28th Street and deliver them to friends. He was returning to a version of himself that was full of spreadsheets. He began to imagine a flower-and-coffee shop. He would call it Meadow Lane, after the five-mile strip in Southampton known as Billionaires Row, where the Nussdorf family has a home.
He got a job with Jeff Leatham, a Los Angeles florist whose client list reads like a table at the Met Gala. Friends from the East Coast would FaceTime Nussdorf to find him in a basement cutting stems. Away from the orchids and peonies, he found himself in the aisles of Erewhon, an upscale organic grocery store that was quickly becoming a hangout for influencers.
He was ready to follow his plan and returned to New York. But he quickly realized that his original vision of a shop devoted to flowers and coffee wasn’t going to cut it. There should be prepared foods, Peruvian grapes, matcha powder.
After signing a lease, he ordered proposals from marketing agencies, only to find that the professionals offered “really boring stuff for $15,000 a month,” he said. So he started a TikTok account.
The first thing he needed was a catchy handle. “Something is really creeping up,” he said. He settled on Brokeback Contessa, an amalgamation of “Brokeback Mountain” and Ina Garten’s “Barefoot Contessa.” In an early video, Nussdorf explained that he had to build a grocery store and document the process, start to finish, warts and all.
He showed that he had a tense meeting with a contractor and then rode in an elevator with sunglasses on. A woman asks him to describe the meeting in three words. “Unhinged, disappointing and expensive,” he says. A TikTok star, or at least a viable social media character, was born.
What happened next was either a masterclass in modern marketing or the kind of thing that happens when someone with lots of passion and no filter builds something publicly. As Nussdorf posted videos detailing his setbacks and moments of doubt, his TikTok followers grew to more than 150,000.
“I think the more disclosure, the more the curtain behind a private company, the more interested people are,” he said.
As Meadow Lane neared its opening date last November, thousands were invested in whether the New York City Department of Buildings would approve its gas line. Vogue and Vanity Fair sent reporters and photographers. Soon, fans stopped Nussdorf on the street: Hey Brokeback! When do we get the turkey wheels?
Bobby Flay’s Pep Talk
While building his business, Nussdorf has dealt with an addiction.
“I launched Meadow Lane in and out of rehab,” he said. “It had nothing to do with the delays. It was hard. After work I would go home and lose control. No sleep. Just trying to fit in my addiction. Trying to hide it too. It’s a nightmare.”
He said he knew his ketamine use had gotten out of control. “I was tired of living that way, addicted to a drug that perpetuated isolation and deep sadness,” he said. “My addiction separated me from myself, everyone and everything I love. The journey forward is not easy. It is a daily decision and practice.”
Meadow Lane helped him through it.
“When you’re in early recovery, you need purpose,” he said. “You need passion. You need a reason to wake up in the morning. It’s great therapy for me, whether I’m behind the table making flowers, which is my meditative state, or I’m helping clients.”
“In a way, I feel like this saved me,” he added. “Meadow Lane and my dog, Schnitzel.” (Schnitzel is, for the record, a mini goldendoodle).
TikTok-powered lines greeted the store’s opening. The kitchen, built for 300 transactions a day, was overwhelmed. At the same time, an online backlash was directed at him for selling such expensive items. “People are threatening to burn down the store and throw rocks through the windows,” Nussdorf told The New York Post, which had made him a running character.
On day three, videos pinged on social media showing the undercooked chicken nuggets. Nussdorf was sure the mistake would sink him. He tracked down the affected customers and refunded them privately, he said, and he posted a video taking responsibility.
“The next day,” he said, “I didn’t think people were coming back—but the lines were longer.”
In the midst of the opening week drama, celebrity chef Bobby Flay, a neighborhood resident, checked out the store. “He probably had the greatest pre-press in the history of opening a food business,” Flay said in an interview. “We were all aware of it.” He turned to the owner, who seemed a little depressed.
“It is so hard,” Nussdorf told him, Flay recalled.
Flay told him what every restaurateur eventually learns: “You asked for this and you got it. Now comes the practical part. Keep your head down and eat the best food you can every day.”
The pep talk worked.
“He talked me off the cliff,” Nussdorf said. “My whole team told me the same thing. But I couldn’t listen to them because they weren’t Bobby Flay.”
The chaos of the early days is now behind him. Meadow Lane is an oasis of honey-toned wood and soft lighting. The artichokes and radicchio heads look like components of a gallery installation.
The store’s logic reveals itself slowly, if at all. Heinz ketchup sits near Flamingo Estate olive oil. Duke’s mayonnaise is a few feet from Ballerina Farms protein powder.
“In the beginning, people were upset that we were selling Duke’s,” Nussdorf said. “I’m like, it’s just the best mayonnaise! Just because there’s something on every shelf in America doesn’t mean it’s a bad product.”
He feels that the criticism he has received for the prices is not justified, adding that the average prepared meal costs about $22. “My Chipotle order of double protein is more than that,” he said. “Why is everyone so mad at me?”
Frances Truesdale, Nussdorf’s operations manager (and daughter of Mary Margaret Truesdale, who runs hospitality for Ralph Lauren), has stuck by Nussdorf through the chicken nugget incident and rehab. “We’ve seen it all together,” she said.
She has also seen a business owner who goes by instinct. “Brands, marketing — it’s all gotten so advanced,” Truesdale said. “There’s such an exhaustion to it. He fails. He says the wrong thing. He posts the wrong thing. And I think in an age where it’s easier than ever to appear perfect, Sammy is evolving beyond that.”
Asked what he saw himself doing at 50, Nussdorf said he had no idea. More Meadow Lane locations? Perhaps. Maybe not. “I should probably make more friends,” he said. “I don’t do much outside of work.”
He cut another stem and placed the flower in the vase. He held up the finished arrangement for Truesdale to see.
“I love it, Sammy,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I need to make flowers more often.”
