Fort Greene’s No. 7 Owners Sue Former Partner for Stealing, Boozing
Image courtesy No. 7
The owners of Fort Greene restaurant No. 7 are going to court over the alleged bad behavior of their former business partner. Chef Tyler Kord and designer Matthew Maddy are suing former operations manager Matt Suchomski for spending more time drinking and hanging out with patrons than actually doing any management of the restaurant’s operations. Oh, and stealing. They’re asking for $2 million.
The trio first opened the restaurant in 2008. All was running smoothly until 2011, when the state tax department froze No. 7’s assets for failing to pay sales tax, DNAInfo reports. And then things got worse, the suit alleges. Kord and Maddy found that Suchomski had supposedly used funds from the restaurant to buy a laptop and make payments to his ex-wife, and failed to put some of the restaurant staff on the books at all. For most of his time, the documents say, Suchomski “would simply imbibe large amounts of alcohol and socialize with patrons.”
In 2012, the IRS notified the eatery that it had failed to pay any taxes for the previous year. Kord and Maddy dissolved their partnership with Suchomski in 2013, and struggled to meet their tax obligations. Suchomski had agreed to pay back his former partners $70,000, but, according to the suit, has yet to make any payments.
None of that is getting in the way of this weekend’s sixth anniversary No. 7 fish fry, however.
