The Market Report

I mentioned yesterday that we didn't come to Great Neck for the Best Market. We did, however, come to Great Neck for this Associated Supermarket owned by Peter Giunta. It started as an A&P, I'm pretty sure, in the 1970s or earlier (the awning we see in the first picture and below match the 1970s-era A&P awning), before being converted to Waldbaum's at some later point. The current Best Market would have been a replacement store for this location in the early 1980s, before Waldbaum's closed in that location in 2015. Associated opened here in 1982 and has been operating since, though they did expand the store very slightly to just over 17,000 square feet.
The first picture shows the side of the store facing the back parking lot, and this side faces the street. Checkouts run along the right side wall, with meat and deli on the left side wall. Dairy lines the front wall with produce on the back wall.
Here's approximately what it would have looked like as an A&a…

As you probably can't tell from that picture, there's a Best Market somewhere in the back of this mall. I have very little to say about it except that this store was previously a Waldbaum's, and the chain has been acquired by LIDL, which is slowly converting all of the locations to LIDL stores. This particular Best Market looks pretty nice, as we can see in an interior photo on Google Maps. You can also tour the now-closed Best Market in Hartsdale, NY, just outside White Plains, here. The Great Neck location is located at 40 Great Neck Rd. But we didn't come to Great Neck for its Best Market, we came for the store we're going to see tomorrow...

Photographed December 2018

After heading east from Jamaica North (see here and here), we enter Long Island proper -- though, in reality, Brooklyn and Queens are geographically part of the island, they are not generally referred to as part of Long Island. North Hempstead is the first town, and on Long Island, the towns are further divided into incorporated villages and unincorporated hamlets. So North Hempstead will include, in our visit, a quick look at just four stores in the village of Great Neck and the hamlets of Roslyn Heights and Albertson. Check back tomorrow for a Snapshot right here on The Market Report!

Our final store of the Jamaica North group is also the most impressive. This Ideal Food Basket started in the 1950s as a Waldbaum's. At some later point, it became a Pioneer, switching to Fine Fare and then back to Pioneer. Around 2013, it was bought and converted to one of the flagship Ideal Food Basket stores. And while it's not huge (16,000 square feet), it certainly feels like it, at almost double the size of the CTown we saw yesterday.
The store, which is attached to a residential complex, also has a two-level parking garage immediately next to it. There is reserved space on the first level for Ideal, where you can park for free with a minimum purchase. Checkouts run along the side of the store, with one entrance (here) to dairy and customer service, and an entrance to the street to deli/bakery and produce. Produce runs along the front wall, with meat and seafood on the side wall opposite the parking garage. Frozen is in the middle of the store. Now, a note on the store:…