Profiling Our Clients: Ifeta & Ismet Huskovic
Profiling Our Clients: Ifeta & Ismet Huskovic
At Business Center for New Americans, we love to see our clients’ businesses
grow and expand. And when our loans help them create a second business, we know we’re doing something right!
BCNA client Ifeta Huskovic and her husband Ismet Huskovic, a talented chef,
are Bosnian refugees who ran a restaurant called Grill Dobrinja in their native Sarajevo. When they came to the United States in 1994 they dreamed of opening another restaurant.
By 1999 they had saved enough money to open a deli called Sarajevo in Astoria. The deli specialized in authentic Bosnian food including cevapi, a special type of Bosnian sausage, and bureks, a popular Bosnian pie.
Then, a year later, with a loan of $25,000 from BCNA, they were able to purchase the equipment and furniture they needed to turn the deli into Sarajevo Restaurant.
sons through college. Nonetheless, their hard work has paid off and Sarajevo
Restaurant, which specializes in Bosnian and Turkish cuisine, is a popular meeting and dining place for members of their community and
residents inThis year the Huskovics came back to BCNA and with the help of Leonid Ostrovsky, BCNA’s Senior Loan Officer, were approved for a loan of $30,000 to expand and open a second restaurant. Their new restaurant, Sarajevo II, opened in April in Coney Island and is being managed by their son Sead.