Tamara Chubinidze opened Chama Mama at 149 West 14th Street in Chelsea in 2019. A Georgian immigrant who arrived in the United States at 15 with her father, she built the concept as her self-described “love letter to Georgia,” serving khachapuri, pkhali, churchkhela, and wines that most New York diners couldn’t have named at the time. The restaurant made the Michelin Guide and helped expand the audience for Georgian cuisine in New York during the years that followed.
In late April she opened a 6,300-square-foot Chama Mama in Bushwick at 81 Morgan Avenue and launched Let’s Chama, a Georgian bakery concept, in both Bushwick and her original Chelsea space. That’s four Chama Mama-affiliated locations across four neighborhoods in seven years, with two formats now running simultaneously across the city.
I’ve been watching how this kind of multi-format expansion plays out in maturing NYC corridors, and there’s a timing read here worth naming.
Why Bushwick, Why Now
Bushwick’s median rent rose 25.6% between 2017 and 2022, from $1,720 to $2,180, the third-highest jump among NYC community districts during that window. The neighborhood’s white population moved from 3.1% to 26.1% over roughly two decades, while its Hispanic population declined from 67.8% to 42.6%. The restaurant market in transitional neighborhoods typically lags the residential market by 18 to 36 months, which means a neighborhood that has been repricing for a decade is just now creating the dining demand that matches the incoming resident profile.
What Chubinidze is doing is entering a corridor while the demand is building rather than after it’s established. Capital costs in Bushwick are still meaningfully lower than in Williamsburg or Greenpoint. The audience arriving is exactly the one that makes mid-size, culturally specific dining concepts work, customers who are curious, disposed toward discovery, and looking for a neighborhood that feels like somewhere rather than nowhere.
The Multi-Format Logic
Let’s Chama is a morning play, with Georgian pastries, specialty lattes, and a grab-and-go format at Chelsea, alongside a 14-seat dine-in bakery at Bushwick. At 81 Morgan Avenue, the full Bushwick complex runs a 64-seat dining room with an open kitchen counter, a 25-seat bar and lounge anchored by a communal table, and the bakery nook, designed to flow from morning coffee through late-evening dining.
Running Chama Mama and Let’s Chama as parallel formats in the same building is an asset utilization decision. One building captures multiple dayparts rather than running at capacity for dinner service only. For operators tracking the Bushwick market specifically, the integrated format is worth studying, since the economics of full-service dinner in a gentrifying neighborhood are difficult to sustain alone, while spreading revenue across a full day materially changes how the unit pencils on a monthly basis.
What the Expansion Pattern Signals
Chubinidze opened her first Chama Mama in 2019, and Georgian cuisine has expanded its NYC audience considerably in the years since, supported by Michelin recognition for Chama Mama itself and a growing wave of Georgian-cuisine restaurants and bakeries arriving across the city. The expansion to Bushwick rides that broader audience growth, and the bakery concept opens a second daypart that the original full-service model couldn’t serve on its own.
For brokers and operators watching the New York deal flow, the pattern here matters beyond Georgian food specifically. A Michelin-listed operator, credentialed from the beginning, timing a multi-format expansion into a gentrifying corridor seven years into a proven concept, is the picture of a group that knows when its market moment has arrived. The neighborhoods she chose, Bushwick for density and curiosity, Chelsea for tourist and commuter throughput, are not guesses. They reflect years of watching where the demand was building.
If you’re watching the NYC market and want to understand what this kind of expansion signals for your own positioning, we’re here.
Sources
What Now New York, Chama Mama Opens Bushwick Location and Launches New Georgian Bakery Concept
Resy Blog, Chama Mama NYC
MICHELIN Guide, Chama Mama
City Limits, In Gentrifying Bushwick, Residents New and Old Unite to Organize Tenants
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