The Market Report

It's the return of Food Connection! We've seen this store before , which is owned by Bill Fani under his company Food Connection, but only as a quick snapshot. We're now returning for a full tour of the store! We have also seen Food Connection's Met Foods and Village Barn in Middle Village, NY. Built as a barrel roof A&P, this store later became a Duane Reade pharmacy before reopening as a supermarket around 2009. It's just north of the SuperFresh , at the corner of Manor Road and Victory Blvd. There is one entrance each at the front and rear of the store, with checkouts running along the wall we're looking at here. Produce lines the back wall, with deli/bakery and seafood lining the front wall. Meat runs along the wall opposite the one we're looking at, with aisles running parallel to the front and back walls. The store is a little less than 10,000 square feet, and although it feels very cramped, it also has a huge selection. Very

In December 2018, the former CTown at 778 Manor Rd was reopened in short order as a SuperFresh owned by brothers Sam and Randy Abed, who also own another SuperFresh on Staten Island (plus one that has since closed ); SuperFresh locations in Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, Brooklyn; and a Key Food Marketplace in Bay Ridge . The store first opened its doors in late December, having its offical grand opening the following May. I visited the store in the first or second week it was in business, and it was clearly at the very beginning but still a lot ahead of where CTown left the store. Our look at this SuperFresh is a little shorter than our tour of the CTown because that coverage was very extensive. I just wanted to show how the store is doing now that it's under new ownership and has had some fixing up. Notice how much brighter the store looks -- it looks like the light fixtures are the same, but they all have new bulbs in them. Big difference. Fully stocked produce wi

We're heading today to the basement of the former Waldbaum's we saw yesterday . This property was previously a CVS before becoming in 2011 a Fresh N Save Marketplace , a Key Food affiliate based in Queens owned by Joe Zariyeh. It was later converted to just plain Key Food, although I don't know who owned it. In fact, the shape of the CTown sign is just the Key Food logo with a new panel in it, much like we saw in Hempstead . The switch to CTown happened around 2015, and I don't know whether ownership changed between Fresh N Save and Key Food, or between Key Food and CTown. Despite the best efforts of the various tenants, it remains the fact that this is a 16,000 square foot, low-ceiling, kind of dingy space. And it can be quite hard to see from the road unless you know what you're looking for. Though the decor was mostly the same from Fresh N Save at the time of my visit to the CTown, it was obvious the store had declined a lot, though the owners were