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Showing posts from March, 2023

Coming Soon!

Welcome to the Stroudsburg area! We're going to be around this part of the state for around a month, with maybe half of that dedicated to Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg. But we're starting to the south of Stroudsburg, a town of around 6000 people in the eastern part of the Poconos, with stops in Pen Argyl, Bangor, and Portland, before moving east to Shawnee and then north to East Stroudsburg, at which point we'll circle back into Stroudsburg itself, then head west and south for stops in Bartonsville, Tannersville, and Brodheadsville. (Then after that it's out west to the Coal Region!) It's a lot of interesting stuff in this area, so let's jump in. Monday will be our first stop, out in Pen Argyl here on The Market Report on Monday!

Look Inside: Los Compadres Mini Market - Easton, PA

Los Compdres Mini Market Owner:  Edward Ovalle Opened:  2013 Cooperative:  none Location:  1649 Washington Ave, Easton, PA Photographed:  January 8, 2021 That's quite the building exterior! This structure was built in the 1950s as a Food Fair, and I would recommend reading JoshAustin610's description of its history here . What he identifies as a former video store is now a small grocery store on the left side of the building, taking up maybe 3,000 square feet of the roughly 12,000 square foot building. It's not hard to tell this building was a grocery store, since it has all of the trademark features but also the beautiful marquee-style feature over what used to be the main entrance (see this example in Trenton for another similar design). The side of the building is clearly an old supermarket, though, between the columns and the bricked-over windows! What appears to be the former Food Fair entrance is now the entrance to Los Compadres Mini Market, a small bodega/grocer. I

Look Inside: Park Avenue Market - Easton, PA

Park Avenue Market Owner: Victor Ricci Opened:  1960s-2021 Cooperative:  none Location:  2468 Park Ave, Easton, PA Photographed:  January 8, 2021 Welcome to Easton, our final stop in our journey through the Lehigh Valley! Easton is the smallest of the three cities that make up most of the Lehigh Valley (the other two being Allentown and Bethlehem), and so we won't spend that much time here in Easton. Our first stop is to the northwest of town, and it was a grocery store from around the 1960s through last year when it appears to have been sold and it's now the Parkk Ave Smoke Outlet & Exotics, which is definitely not what the store was when I visited. The 7600 square foot space, as we can see, appears to have been expanded around an original residential building, and is now very long and thin. When I visited, there were a few long grocery aisles with frozen on the left side, deli and meat on the back wall, and dairy and produce on the right side. Let's head in. We can s

Look Inside: Azar Supermarket - Bethlehem, PA

Azar Supermarket Owner: George Azar Opened:  2019 Cooperative:  none Location:  3131 Linden St, Bethlehem, PA Photographed:  January 8, 2021 Today's post is relatively brief, but we're going to see this really interesting store which seems to be a hybrid of a farmstand, a Middle Eastern specialty store, and a basic grocer. Oh, and a beautiful garden center . It's a somewhat strange packed into the roughly 16,000 square foot store, but it was a very pleasant shopping experience, and the folks who work here seemed to be quite friendly. We enter to a large produce department taking up around 1/3 of the store in the front left corner, with butcher/deli in the back left corner, frozen/dairy around the outside, and a few grocery aisles with basic groceries and imported Middle Eastern items. It's an eclectic mix of items with exceptionally good produce, so it works. I bought kale here for extremely cheap that was some of the healthiest I've ever seen. Check out those gian

TOUR: Valley Farm Market - Bethlehem, PA

Valley Farm Market Owner: Joe Fasula Opened:  2021 under current ownership; 2003 previously Cooperative:  Wakefern Food Corp. Location:  1880 Stefko Blvd, Bethlehem, PA Photographed:  September 10, 2016 & January 13, 2022 We are to visit what's left of Valley Farm Market, once a local chain that had a location where SuperFood Fresh is now. This is a fairly sizable store, at around 66,000 square feet, and part of it was originally a Food Fair (note the signature tower), later a Food Lane and then Valley Farm Market. In 2021, Valley Farm was sold to Wyoming Valley chain Gerrity's, and I was here shortly after the sale. A few months after Gerrity's purchased this store, the 10-store chain joined Wakefern as The Fresh Grocer. I'm not 100% clear on whether this store is still branded Valley Farm Market (initially they said they wouldn't change the name, then later announced it would become a Fresh Grocer). But as of my January 2022 visit, it was still very much the