TOUR: New York Marts - Quincy, MA

New York Marts
Open: 2013-2022

Owner: Long Deng

Previous Tenants: Super 88 Market > Thuận Đạt Supermarket

Cooperative: none

Location: 733 Hancock St, Quincy, MA

Photographed: August 4, 2019 and May 6, 2023

I mentioned about a week ago that there had been a couple of store closures in Quincy between my 2019 visit and my 2023 visit. One of those stores was this one, a roughly 15,000 square foot New York Marts that opened in 2013 and closed a little under ten years later in 2022. Prior to New York Marts, a small chain of Chinese supermarkets, the space was occupied by Super 88, another Chinese supermarket chain from the Boston area, then an independent called Thuận Đạt Supermarket, a Vietnamese store.

The store's large seafood and meat departments lined the left side of the building, with registers across the front wall and produce in the middle. Grocery aisles and frozen/refrigerated foods were behind the produce department.

I don't know for sure why this store closed in 2022, but I do know that New York Marts and sister chain iFresh declared bankruptcy that year. Several of their stores were closed or sold in that process, which is what I have to assume happened here. The chain still has a couple stores under the New York Marts and iFresh names, mostly in New York and Florida.

It looks like the fixtures were fairly new, maybe installed when New York Marts opened up.

These unusual two-tiered frozen cases lined the outside walls of the store.

Even though New York Marts overall was struggling, I'd assume it's also difficult to attract customers to an Asian supermarket here when you're just across town from the largest Asian supermarket in New England, and a couple blocks from two more Asian supermarkets we'll see in a few days.

Refrigerated items line the outside of the last grocery aisle on the right side of the store.

An overview of the produce department. It was a rather nice setup.

Now for a return to the store after its closure, with pictures from 2023. Notice that the New York Mart sign here was actually left over from the Super 88 days, and possibly even from a prior tenant. I don't know what was here before Super 88, but the building actually dates back to the early 1950s. (Also notice that one sign said New York Marts and the other said New York Mart.)

When New York Marts closed up shop, essentially everything was left as-is inside. You can get a sense of the store's setup, but also how (relatively) small it was. New York Marts was the largest of the three supermarkets here, as they eventually expanded into a neighboring space previously occupied by a bank branch. You can see the expansion to the far right below.

And as a matter of fact, it looks like that expansion actually happened shortly before the store closed, and at the very least, after I visited in 2019. The area visible to the far right with the windows and upright refrigerators was definitely not there when I visited in the summer of 2019.

That's all for this former New York Marts, and tomorrow we'll see a before-and-after at one of the closed and subsequently reopened supermarkets just north of here!