The Independent Edition

Market Fresh Supermarket Owner: Diego Sanchez Opened:  2002 as Associated; 2018 as Market Fresh Cooperative:  Allegiance Retail Services Location:  52 NY-17K, Newburgh, NY Photographed:  November 22, 2023 Welcome to the Market Fresh of Newburgh! It's just a bit east of yesterday's Adams Fairacre Farms , but a very different supermarket. If Adams is a sprawling gourmet market and garden center, Market Fresh is a compact but well-appointed straightforward supermarket. Then again, at 30,500 square feet, it's not exactly small, but the 80,000 square foot Adams complex dwarfs it. There are three Market Fresh stores affiliated with Allegiance Retail Services (which also runs Foodtown , Pathmark , and Green Way stores), the other two being in Poughkeepsie 16 miles or so north of here, and Middletown , about as far west. All three were previously Associated Supermarkets, then joined Allegiance and switched to Market Fresh in 2018. This one here in Newburgh recently got a ...

Farm Country Supermarkets Owner: Jose Diaz Opened:  November 2022 Cooperative:  Key Food Stores Co-Operative Location:  37-15 31st Ave, Astoria, Queens, NY Photographed:  January 12, 2023 Today's third special report is not far from the first two in Long Island City (see here and here ). We're about 3/4 of a mile north in Astoria, Queens, for a store that was an Associated Supermarket since 1976. After closing in summer of 2022, it reopened in November as a Farm Country affiliated with Key Food. The Farm Country in East New York we toured a while back was sold shortly after I visited, around 2020, and changed its affiliation from Shop Fair to Key Food, and that store's owners have since opened two others -- this one and a former Waldbaum's-turned-Food Universe in Jackson Heights. The 13,000 square foot store was a very old supermarket , and Farm Country's owners clearly invested a lot of money to modernize the space and drastically increase selection, or at least...

Kenilworth Fresh Market Owner: unknown Opened:  2020 under current ownership Cooperative:  Krasdale Location:  488 Kenilworth Blvd, Kenilworth, NJ Photographed:  May 2020 and June 2021 We return to this small supermarket at the west end of downtown Kenilworth after first seeing it in February 2017 here . This building has held a supermarket for at least about 25 years, as it was an Associated Supermarket in the late 90s, then ExpresSupermarket until around 2012, and Kenilworth Fresh Market from 2012 to 2019 when the store closed. Above is the store in May 2020, available for lease. But at the end of 2020, the store was re-opened under new ownership with everything exactly as it previously was -- inside and outside, and the store was once again affiliated with Krasdale Foods (but this time it's officially a Shop Smart Food Market, and it runs the Shop Smart circular). You can see a few of the Shop Smart sale posters in the first picture, which is from this month, Jun...

Superfood Marketplace Owner:  Ana Lemes Opened:  2019 Cooperative:  Retail Grocers Group Location:  543 Shaler Blvd, Ridgefield, NJ Photographed:  January 2020 Our next store in the Bergen - Passaic group is actually one we've been to before! This Coop-turned-Associated-turned-Fine Fare-turned-The Market Place-turned-Met Fresh-turned-Ridgefield Market is now Elizabeth, NJ-based Superfood Marketplace, whose Elizabeth and Allentown locations we've previously seen. Check out the interior shortly after Ridgefield Market closed and a full history of the store here . (By the way, the tree symbol I point out at the Associated is actually called the Twin Pines, and it's the universal sign for a cooperatively owned business, so it dates back to the store's days as a Coop.) Caught up? Good, now we can tour the newly renovated interior! You enter on the right side of the storefront and cross the front of the store to the produce department in the...