LIDL
One more, specifically in Williamsburg just two and a half miles northeast of the downtown Brooklyn location. This store, at 597 Grand Street, is still under construction. But the bright and bold signage is already up, and you can't miss it. A glimpse inside through an open door, which you can see below, showed the space was still mostly an empty shell. Until four years ago, this property was home to a very old-school, one-story Key Food supermarket. The development in its place has been under construction for about three years, although LIDL was only announced as the replacement tenant this year.
The new LIDL will be slightly smaller than the downtown Brooklyn one, at around 27,000 square feet. That's larger than the now-demolished Key Food, though, which was closer to 15,000 square feet.
Opened: May 23, 2025
Owner: The Schwarz Group
Another new LIDL for NYC! The discount chain continues to grow, albeit much more slowly than originally forecast, and here in downtown Brooklyn the latest location opened up in late May. At 30,000 square feet, it's not huge, but it's fairly large for an urban Brooklyn store. It follows a store that opened at the Gateway Center in January.
The store is set up in a highly unusual way. The majority of the supermarket is on the second floor -- in a space previously occupied by a Raymour & Flanigan furniture store -- but a small space on the first floor, which has its own entrance, is home to the bakery and floral departments. You can either go to those departments and then check out at the self-checkouts, then leave out the front doors, or you can leave that room without checking out and get on an escalator up to the main supermarket, which has its own checkouts. Definitely a very unusual way to set up the supermarket.
This space is not in any other way connected to the main supermarket space. We're in what's kind of an indoor mall here, and these are basically two different spaces in the mall.
Now, as we head up the escalator into the main supermarket, everything else is pretty straightforward based on what we might expect from a new LIDL.
Produce is the first department we enter, on the right side of the store. Cold cuts and refrigerated prepared foods are behind produce on the right side, with meat and seafood in the rest of the first aisle. Dairy is on the back wall with frozen on the left side.
The store is set up with two kind of dead-end hallways to the right -- produce in the front, deli/prepared foods behind it.
Even for a store several weeks out from its grand opening, this LIDL was in excellent shape with really well-stocked shelves. I've been in some other city LIDLs that are really disorganized.
My best guess is that they're expecting to do a lot of volume here, and so far, they seem to be just about right. The store seemed busy when I visited last week.
One grocery aisle along with deli and prepared foods in the next dead-end area on the right side.
This store has digital price tags, which the New York stores mostly do but the New Jersey ones do not yet. I've been told that they will soon begin receiving digital price tags.
Meat and seafood are in the rest of the first grocery aisle. There's a lot more stock on the shelves here than at the LIDLs I usually go to, probably because they expect traffic.
You can also see the shelves are generally really well-stocked.
There's a Trader Joe's right across the street, and a number of other supermarkets around. A Fresh Grocer, owned by Inserra Supermarkets, is slated to open diagonally across the street in the fall.
The finishes here are modern and simple, as you can see. LIDL's store design is much simpler and lower-end now than some of their earlier iterations, but I really like the latest stores LIDL has been opening.
Frozen foods are on the left side of the store.
It goes without saying, too, that all these cases are brand-new.
As you pass through the checkouts, which are also on the second floor, you're directed back towards the escalator to bring you back down to the first floor.
It's definitely true that these big-chain supermarkets are having to adapt to more, uh, unique locations if they want to expand in New York City. The Trader Joe's across the street -- like many of their NYC stores -- is in the basement, actually built into the DeKalb Market Hall.
Previous Tenants: assorted non-grocery tenants
Cooperative: none
Location: 490 Fulton St, Brooklyn, NY
Photographed: June 13, 2025
And that's all for this LIDL, but as the chain expands in and around NYC, there's more to see!
LIDL
Opening: TBA
Owner: The Schwarz Group
Previous Tenants: none; Key Food previously on property
Cooperative: none
Location: 597 Grand St, Brooklyn, NY
Photographed: June 13, 2025
I'll be back for sure once this store opens up to check it out. In the meantime, plenty more to see this weekend, and on Monday, it's back to Boston!
Saturday
- Whole Foods opens new Daily Shop locations in Hells Kitchen and Stuy Town
- LIDL opens a new Downtown Brooklyn location as it prepares another in nearby Williamsburg (this post)
Sunday
- More LIDL news as we check out one of their new NJ locations plus another on the way
- Signage goes up for the latest SuperFresh coming soon
- An Indian supermarket moves into a strip mall once home to an ACME in Passaic County
- We check in on a renovated ShopRite and a newly rejiggered Amazon Fresh across the street from each other
I love how LIDL is the ant-ALDI. Big, bright, clean and vastly superior on selection!
ReplyDeleteThe Weehawken store has the digital shelf tags. Have to say, the nicest I've seen yet! I was looking at prices the other day and had no idea I was looking at digital signs. Both ShopRite's and Walmart's digital tags are dreadful and sometimes nearly impossible to read. It will be interesting to see how these tags play out as there are concerns stores will be manipulating prices due to demand by the simple push of a button.