Skip to main content

TOUR: Bravo Supermarkets - Hempstead, NY

For our first store tour in Hempstead proper, we're starting in the northeastern corner of the downtown area. Central Hempstead tends to be lower-income and more densely minority-populated than Garden City. This Bravo Supermarket has been in this location for many years, though I caught it right at the beginning of a renovation that expanded the store from a very small 6300 square feet to a slightly less tiny 7200 square feet by pushing out the front wall into the parking lot (you can see it under construction above). The front end faces the parking lot, with the aisles running parallel to Fulton Ave. I would imagine if this has been a supermarket for a long time, the aisles originally ran perpendicular to the street with the front end facing the street instead of the parking lot, as was common in stores laid out this way.
When you enter the store, you turn left to pass a deli-bakery counter in the front corner and reach produce in the first aisle. Meats run along the back wall, with dairy in the last aisle. Though I don't remember for sure, I believe frozen foods are in the second-to-last aisle.
An extremely compact but complete deli-bakery, including rolls and bread baked in-store. You can turn around to look down the first aisle, which is lined on both sides with produce. You can see that the produce aisle has been expanded to a double-wide aisle, removing the first grocery aisle, since the time of my visit.
Down at the end of the aisle on the left you can see the leafy greens selection. One thing I don't understand at all (perhaps we can get some insight from our wonderful readers) is that when I visit Hispanic-focused stores of approximately the same size in other regions of the country, they do not sell leafy greens like these NY/NJ stores do -- even in Massachusetts, which isn't that far from NYC. You'd be hard-pressed to find loose spinach or kale in a comparable Latin grocery store in Florida, but it's rare to come across a store like this in the NYC area that doesn't sell products like leafy greens.
Looking along the back wall of the store. Cool rounded endcaps!
Nicely stocked grocery aisles. They have to be very carefully stocked to have a full selection in such a small location.
Not much to see in aisle 3, or so I thought when I snapped this picture. Actually, I was wrong on a few counts. First of all, let's take a look at that decor (the aisle marker and the sign on the front end). It's what I identify as the 2000s decor on this post. And since I now actually have three Bravos to one CTown for the decor package, it's quite likely it was used in both brands and could have even been developed especially for Bravo. Second, let's focus a little more carefully. Observant readers will realize that the aisle marker is in fact not an aisle marker but a checkout lane marker. There's no space for listing anything in the aisle, and it offers a rather premature "Thank You for Shopping Bravo." I can't picture hanging that in the very cramped front end of this store, so does anyone else think it's possible that it's secondhand? You can see from this Google Maps photo that aisle 3 is the only one with the checkout lane marker instead of a standard aisle marker.
I'm a little confused here, I think dairy might span parts of two aisles.
For our next post, we'll be crossing the street diagonally to visit the Key Food of Hempstead!

Bravo Supermarkets

401 W Fulton Ave, Hempstead, NY
Photographed December 2018

Comments