The Independent Edition

Village Barn Fresh Market Owner:  Bill Fani Opened:  2016 Cooperative:  Associated Supermarket Group Location:  80-05 Caldwell Ave, Middle Village, NY Photographed:  July 2018 Jumping right into our Middle Village stores with this store right near the middle of what felt to me like a central area. I don't know Middle Village well enough to know whether this truly is like a downtown area, but it sure is easy to forget that you're in basically the center of Queens when you arrive here in Middle Village. It's a pleasant, low-key, and relaxed neighborhood that certainly feels more suburban than most. And it has two supermarkets diagonally across the street from each other, a Met Foods and this Village Barn, both owned by Bill Fani's company Food Connection. Food Connection also owns two Met Foods on Staten Island . Fani purchased the store back in 2016 and gut-renovated it, bringing the focus more towards upscale, gourmet, and natural products. ...

Our next stores in Queens, NY are in Middle Village and Maspeth neighborhoods! Now this group is going to be much shorter than the last (see coverage  here  and  here ), partially because there are fewer neighborhoods we're cramming in here, but mostly because each of these neighborhoods only has two supermarkets. It's also interesting, though, that these two rather suburban, somewhat isolated neighborhoods' stores follow the same pattern. Both neighborhoods have a big-name store (Middle Village has a Met Foodmarket and Maspeth has a Key Food), and both neighborhoods have an independent store owned by the same person as the big-name store (MV's is called Village Barn Fresh Market owned by Bill Fani; the Maspeth Marketplace is owned by Danny Doleh). Anyway, we'll get more into these specific stores here and on  The Market Report  over the next few days, so check back soon!