The Independent Edition

Flatbush Food Coop Owner:  cooperatively owned Opened:  1976, 2007 in current location Cooperative:  affiliated with Coop Food Stores Location:  1415 Cortelyou Rd, Brooklyn, NY Photographed:  May 2019 I made a reference to the Flatbush Food Coop in yesterday's Natural Frontier post, so here's a look at the store. In business since 1976, this community-owned natural food coop moved to their present location, a former Associated supermarket, in 2007. This store is, as the storefront advertises, open to the public and not just owners as some are, such as the Park Slope Food Coop in western Brooklyn (which has had more than its share of controversy over its life). The Flatbush Food Coop is fundamentally more welcoming, but the store also makes an effort to be incorporated into the community. It competes with Natural Frontier about four blocks west and a Key Food a block and a half east, so it has to balance the specialty positioning with...

Natural Frontier Market Owner:  Nima D Lama Opened:  2007 Cooperative:  none Location:  1102 Cortelyou Rd, Brooklyn, NY Photographed:  May 2019 This natural food store opened in 2007, causing some controversy as customers switched from the longtime Flatbush Food Co-Op to Natural Frontier, which also has a location in Astoria, Queens. I'm quite disappointed that I didn't go inside, but you can get the full tour yourself by checking out this interactive 360-degree tour on Google Maps. Cortelyou Road is an east-west road parallel to Church Avenue, but on the other side of the affluent, nearly suburban residential district of Prospect Park South. Cortelyou is the main business strip for Prospect Park South, which is bounded on the west by Coney Island Avenue (where we recently saw an Ideal Food Basket ) and loosely on the east by Ocean Avenue, two blocks west of Flatbush Avenue. We're going to tour two stores on Cortelyou Road before heading bac...

Alright, we've finished up Bushwick and are now heading to the southwestern portion of Brooklyn to see the area broadly referred to as Flatbush! Flatbush is a fascinating combination of landscapes, architectural styles, cultures, and of course, supermarkets. It is, of course, a massive oversimplification to separate this group of stores into just two neighborhoods, but in the broadest sense, Prospect Lefferts Gardens is the northern section of our tour and Flatbush is the southern section. Our route will take approximately the shape of Texas (I can't think of any other way to describe it), starting in the northern arm with Prospect Lefferts Gardens and stores along Flatbush Avenue, the main thoroughfare through much of southern Brooklyn. We turn west in the northern part of Flatbush to follow Church Avenue to the border of Kensington before returning east along Cortelyou Road in Prospect Park South. At Clarendon Road, we join back up with Flatbush Avenue to continue south in ...