Top Tomato Superstore
Owner: Carmine Sciandra
Opened: 2007
Cooperative: none
Location: 1071 Bay Street, Rosebank, Staten Island, NY
Photographed: March 2020
Here on The Independent Edition, I like to give some background on the stores we visit and their owners. This time I'm going to let the Staten Island Advance speak for me. Owner Carmine Sciandra even has his own Wikipedia page. But, uh, let's focus on the supermarket here.
The 12,000 square foot supermarket is basically divided into two halves. When you enter and turn right, you enter the grocery department with dairy on the right-side wall and frozen food and meat at the back of the store. Deli/bakery, produce, and seafood make up the left half.
General grocery is not this store's focus, clearly, since perishables take up more than half of the sales floor space.
Like North Shore Farms, this store sells some Price Rite-branded items from Wakefern.
Frozen foods are in the third grocery aisle, and by the way the grocery aisles run parallel to the storefront.
Meat department on the back wall of the grocery half.
Deli is next along the back wall, with produce taking up most of the middle of the store. It's a huge selection proportional to the rest of the store.
Seafood in the back corner on the left side wall, with checkouts lining the front of the perishables section.
Nice seafood counter, with more self-service fish in the island in front! Our next stop, over on Grocery Archaeology, is just up the street from this location.
There were some of these in NJ at one point, but it looks like only two on Staten Island remain now, per the website.
ReplyDeleteWe wound up with some of their bags up here around Albany at the Ocean State Job Lots chain (they not only buy up items to sell that other stores want to get rid of, but unwanted bags as well ;).
Yep. This chain's business operations have been kind of a mess, with the New Jersey stores lasting for a very short time. There's another location in Yonkers, too, which looks to have been spun off. Two of the Staten Island locations are now Associated, one of which I've toured and will be posting soon, at the other end of the island!
DeleteVery interesting... we've had some odd bags around here lately, but I know a lot of those discount stores have unusual bags.