Look Inside: Brothers International Supermarket - Lancaster, PA

Brothers International Supermarket
Owner: Adriano Gomez

Opened: unknown, closed ca. 2020

Cooperative: Associated Supermarket Group (?)
Location: 806 S Duke St, Lancaster, PA

Photographed: August 20, 2019

We are in the next block west from Brothers Foodmax to check out the original Brothers grocery store here in Lancaster, which was about 4300 square feet. As we see, it was co-branded with the Brothers name and the Compare Foods logo, although it was never actually on the Compare Foods website's store locator. Although the store was very small, it was a complete supermarket with produce, deli/meat, dairy, frozen, and a few grocery aisles.

I was unaware that this store had closed until I started preparing for this post. And not only has it closed, it's been completely demolished. I wonder if that was one of the reasons Brothers Foodmax seems to be doing better these days; they brought some of the resources from this store over there to be running it better, and possibly also they stopped competing with themselves.

Brothers here had a large butcher shop in the back of the store, business which likely was transferred to the Foodmax up the street.

As we can see, this tiny store was much better-stocked than the much larger but still pretty small Foodmax, so maybe that store was just too large for them too. And we see something rather unconventional outside, a full hot food department in the parking lot under a tent...

Here you can see this store when it was in business, and today. Remember how I said the city of Lancaster was going to be very different from the rural parts of Lancaster County? Well, the downtown area of Lancaster is served by two familiar names we might not otherwise expect to find out here -- a CTown and a Bravo. Head over to The Market Report tomorrow to check out the first, which is about 10 blocks north of this store!