By Rick Hynum
A legal and personal dispute between a pair of estranged business partners—formerly girlfriend and boyfriend—took a dramatic turn after a fire heavily damaged Café Crevier, an acclaimed pizzeria in Denville, New Jersey, earlier this month.
No cause for the fire has been publicly identified, and no one has been named in connection with the investigation. No injuries have been reported.
Court filings show that co-owner Brittany Crevier previously alleged that her Café Crevier partner and ex-boyfriend, Nick Conforti, had threatened to “burn the business down (literally, not just figuratively)” after their breakup.
In the weeks leading up to the fire, Crevier had been posting TikTok videos about personal and business issues she said she was having with Conforti. Those videos have garnered about 300,000 views and more than 6,700 likes on the platform.
Crevier and Conforti opened Café Crevier about four years ago. Conforti’s family has owned Angeloni’s Restaurant & Pizzeria in Caldwell, New Jersey, since 2012.
The fire, which occurred in the early morning hours of June 2, has forced Cafe Crevier to close indefinitely. Crevier told NorthJersey.com that she doubted the building could be repaired. According to that news site, the three-alarm fire caused the roof to partially collapse and wreaked damage on several neighboring businesses as well.
In a statement reported by radio station WRNJ, Crevier said she was “beyond grateful that no one was injured, and my thoughts remain with employees, customers and community members who have supported the café over the years. Local fire officials are conducting a thorough investigation into this incident. I am cooperating with all authorities and will continue to do so as their work progresses.”
The incident reportedly was referred to Morris County’s Arson/Environmental Crimes Unit, which investigates all commercial property fires.
Dave Portnoy visited Café Crevier in May 2024 and gave the restaurant’s Thinny Thin pizza a stellar 8.5 score. “I love it,” Portnoy said in his video review. “It’s outrageously good…I mean, it’s spectacular.” Prior to that, Portnoy reviewed a similar pizza at Angeloni’s and gave it an 8.8 score.
A Battle in the Court
Problems between Crevier and Conforti have been playing out in court—and spilling onto social media—since Crevier launched a second restaurant, Bistro Crevier, in nearby Ledgewood in February, without Conforti as a partner.
Conforti and his company, Café Conforti LLC, which owns 50% percent of Café Crevier, sued to keep Bistro Crevier from opening, but the restaurant is currently operating. That suit, filed on February 18, accused Crevier of breaching her partnership agreement with Conforti by opening Bistro Crevier, which “targets the same regional dining market as Café Crevier,” without his consent. It alleged that she “disrupted operations” at Café Crevier when she “removed Café Crevier’s cook to Bistro Crevier” and “solicited additional Café Crevier employees.”
The suit also alleged that Crevier revoked Conforti’s access to Café Crevier’s POS system as well as “certain financial and management platforms used in the operation of Café Crevier.”
In a response filed in March, Crevier decried Conforti’s lawsuit as “nothing more than a form of domestic violence.” She pointed to what she called “abusive and threatening behavior toward me” after she and Conforti broke up, “including repeatedly threatening to burn down the café on multiple occasions over the past several years.”
“He has stated he does not care about the business and would sabotage it to hurt me,” Crevier said in a certified statement to the court. “He has threatened on several occasions to burn the business down (literally, not just figuratively). He makes up stories about me to anyone who will listen and tries to slander me in our industry.”
Crevier also stated that “some employees have taken shifts at Bistro Crevier, but that has not interfered with their work at Café Crevier. The employees are allowed to work a second job, and since I am the one running Café Crevier, I can attest that Bistro Crevier has not had an impact on the work schedule or staffing at Café Crevier.”
Conforti has not publicly responded to Crevier’s allegations, and his attorney, Gregory Mascera, has declined to discuss the case in detail, citing attorney-client privilege.
@brittcrev I love everyone that has been supporting @Cafe Crevier and my new restaurant @bistro crevier Not dropping all the tea just yet but here’s a sneak peak 🙃 I will fill everyone in on the hell I’ve been going through very soon 😩 #smallbusiness #relationships #nj #fyp ♬ original sound – BRITTANY CREVIER
Allegations on TikTok
In a May 7 video on TikTok—less than a month before the fire—Crevier described alleged issues with a person she did not name, though the caption identified him as her “business partner.” In a separate video on May 9, Crevier said that business partner “is my ex-boyfriend of about eight or nine years.”
In the May 7 video, Crevier alleged that her business partner and “a person I previously worked for” screamed at her “for hours” and told her that “the business will fail with just me running it, that I don’t know what I’m doing, that I’m stupid, that I am nothing without them…Once they said that to me, I made that literally my goal to prove them wrong, and I did. So if any man ever tells you anything like that, prove them wrong.”
In the caption for that video, she wrote that she had been “running the restaurant by myself for 2 years with no help from my ‘partner.’”
“If I didn’t know what I was doing, I wouldn’t be able to open my second restaurant on my own, but I did,” Crevier went on to say in the TikTok video. “And I did that solely because I knew what this person is capable of doing to people because I’ve seen it over the past 10 years of my life.”
Crevier posted another TikTok video on May 9 that showed a busy kitchen and dining room at Café Crevier, stating, “I’ll never stop fighting for this place.”
@brittcrev I’ll never stop fighting for this place 🤍 @Cafe Crevier ♬ original sound – BRITTANY CREVIER
Landlord Problems
The dispute with Conforti wasn’t the only legal pressure facing Café Crevier before the fire.
The restaurant was also named in a separate lawsuit filed May 13 by Linda Eckert, acting with power of attorney for her mother, the building’s owner and landlord. According to NewJersey.com, the complaint alleged that the restaurant’s original lease expired on July 31, 2024, and that the tenants remained in the space on a month-to-month basis with no formal renewal notice having been submitted, as required by the lease.
That complaint also reportedly referred to unresolved water seepage and moisture intrusion, failure to meet HVAC maintenance obligations, and “the unlawful service and/or consumption of alcohol by minors” at the premises.
In court filings, Crevier has alleged that the landlord “had never expressed any concerns” about the lease until being contacted by Conforti. “I believe this was done [by] Mr. Conforti to destroy the value of the restaurant for the purposes of ‘buying me out’ of our partnership.” She alleged that Conforti, as an equal partner in Café Crevier, has withheld his consent to take legal action against the landlord to protect the restaurant’s space.
Crevier’s attorney reportedly dismissed Eckert’s claims as “garbage,” while Eckert’s attorney, Dorothy De Marinis, told NJ.com that Crevier’s TikTok videos “deflect from actual facts that are documented in that complaint.”
‘You’re Fueling Me’
Crevier hasn’t posted on TikTok since May 28, just a few days before the fire. In that last video, she said, “The people who my videos are about are apparently upset and angry that I’m making the videos…. A little advice: Maybe just don’t be a s****y person and you won’t be embarrassed of your own actions.”
She added, “You’re not going to drain me of my energy. If anything, you’re fueling me. So keep it going.”
Crevier’s new restaurant, Bistro Crevier, currently has a 4.3 rating on Google with 67 reviews. One reviewer wrote, “I had an absolutely fantastic experience here! If you’re a fan of thin and crispy pizza, this is the spot. The sourdough crust had the perfect crunch, and the sauce was wonderfully tangy and packed with flavor…What really sets this place apart, though, is the service. It’s so refreshing to see the owner on the floor, actively checking on guests and making sure everyone is well taken care of.”
