TOUR: Olive Tree Marketplace - Sunnyside, Staten Island, NY

Olive Tree Marketplace

Owner: David Shehadeh

Opened: 2014

Cooperative: Retail Grocers Group

Location: 1490 Clove Road, Sunnyside, Staten Island, NY

Photographed: March 2020

In 2014, David Shehadeh (of the same family that runs the two Shop Fairs at 4121 and 2720 Church Avenue) opened this Olive Tree Marketplace in a former Mignosi's Supermarket on Staten Island. The Olive Tree banner, originally affiliated with Key Food but now affiliated with Retail Grocers Group's Shop Fair group, has had little success with a location in New Jersey from 2016 to 2018 (more extensive coverage of that location is coming soon) and a location in Brooklyn, which we covered here, from 2018 to, uh, later in 2018.

This location has gone through some tough times too, with shelves periodically emptying and then being restocked. At the time of my visit, some parts were a little sparse, but the store had advertised being "under new management," a trick that they used in Denville before the store finally closed as well (management never changed).

Though the store fronts to Clove Road (up the street from yesterday's CTown), it's oriented towards the parking lot in the back, where the only entrance and exit is located. Produce runs along the left wall, the first aisle, with the deli counter running along the entire back wall. Meats and dairy line the last aisle, with a tiny frozen department and a beer cave in the front corner.

The design of the store interior is beautiful, but clearly isn't operating at full capacity. The wooden shelving above the produce cases to the left once held paper goods, which is probably now filling space in grocery aisles as the grocery selection was reduced. I can't explain the packaged fruits we see here, either. And if you look carefully, the produce cases are not full, and the selection has been cut back to include now some overflow dairy in the back corner.

The high ceiling is a really nice feature, though!

Very nice deli on the back wall, though I do wonder what the turnover is like. Probably rather low given the fact that the store was deserted at the time of my visit.

This section on the right half of the back wall, which is now prepared foods, used to be seafood and sushi. While it's a sign of a failing business to remove departments, I have to give them credit for actually replacing them with something instead of simply putting boxes of chips and pallets of bottled water in front of the old counter.

The grocery aisles are pretty nice, and generally well-stocked.

Meat and dairy in the last aisle. It's a somewhat strange layout, but it makes sense, I suppose. If I were designing the store, I probably would've put dairy in the first aisle facing produce and made this aisle general grocery on the side facing meats, which line the outside wall of the store.

Looking across the somewhat disorganized front end to the rather empty produce case in the first aisle. Well I wish I had a more positive report from this store, but it looks like it's not far from going out of business by now. Anyway, up next we have a former Waldbaum's that's just a little west of this store near the Staten Island Expressway!