99 Ranch Market
Time for another NYC grand opening! And this is an important one. 99 Ranch Market, the west coast-based Asian supermarket chain, has arrived for the first time in New York City. Beginning in 2016, the chain established a presence in the area, with Jersey City and Edison opening that year. Hackensack opened in 2018 -- all three were former Pathmarks -- and then 99 Ranch moved north with a store in Quincy, MA in 2020 and east with a store in Westbury, NY in 2022. They've now opened their latest east coast store, a 22,000 square foot store in downtown Flushing.
It's situated right on Main Street in the middle of the action in Flushing, one of New York City's largest Asian communities. This is, notably, one of the only times an Asian supermarket chain from out of town has entered the Flushing market. The (many) other Asian supermarkets in and around this neighborhood are either local small chains or H Mart, which originated basically up the street in Woodside. Prior to 99 Ranch, this building was an independent called Hong Kong Supermarket, later rebranded as Super HK Market.
Super HK's main entrance and exit faced 37th Ave, the side street you can see above, but 99 Ranch has reoriented the store to face Main Street. There's still an entrance and exit on 37th Ave, but the entrance was closed off -- a bad decision, in my opinion, because then all of the entering traffic and most of the exiting traffic was funneled through a single door at the front. (Not even a separate door for the entrance and exit -- one door for both. It was chaos, because as you'll see in my pictures, the store was packed.) I visited on Friday, which was the official grand opening, but the soft opening was about a week ago.
I don't think 99 Ranch was prepared at all for the traffic this store would get in its first days and weeks. Crowd control was haphazard (and why was the 37th Avenue entrance closed, the most obvious fix for the crowding at the front entrance?) and several reviews online already note struggles with directing traffic and keeping people moving in the right direction. I'm sure eventually they'll figure out a system, but it was not a good look for the grand opening.
That said, the store is very attractive and extensively renovated from the former HK Market. HK's main entrance and exit were on the side, facing 37th Avenue, while now the main entrance faces Main Street. You enter to produce in the front-right corner, with packaged refrigerated foods lining the right side wall of the store. Seafood and meat are on the back wall of the store. Grocery and frozen are in the rear of the building, with beverages and a set of registers in the back-left corner. Dairy and the main set of registers line the left side of the building. Because it's shaped like an upside-down L, the section in the back with grocery and frozen is wider than the section in the front with produce and the registers.
The store is very attractive and they certainly make effective use of the sales floor space they have. There's an additional 15,000 square feet in the basement that's soon to become a food court, and you can see the escalators (not yet open) in one of the earlier pictures that will eventually bring people downstairs.
Looking to the left side of the store, below, you can see where it gets wider...
All of the fixtures are new, in large part because 99 Ranch's layout is completely different from HK's. More on HK soon.
Seafood and meat are at the back of the store, starting at the end of the last aisle and continuing across the back wall of the store.
Here's a look at how 99 Ranch has used the space efficiently in this store, compared to many of their others which are two or three times the size. Live seafood is in the back-right corner, and there are several tiers of display cases in the department.
Here's an interesting idea of this neighborhood's density: within two miles of this store, there are 25 other Asian supermarkets, by my count. And that number doesn't include the numerous smaller grocers, greengrocers, and other food stores in the area. For a perspective on the neighborhood: the corner of Main Street and Roosevelt Ave, two blocks south of this store, is the third-busiest intersection in New York City, behind only Times Square and Herald Square.
Here's a look across the back wall to the left side wall of the store.
In some ways, this grand opening did feel a bit more like a soft opening, and there were definitely some kinks that probably should have been worked out first -- such as the crowd control (and below, you can see people exiting, but not entering, through the side door) and the aisle markers, several of which didn't have any categories on them yet. The food court makes sense to open after the grand opening -- that's quite common -- but the other issues feel like things 99 Ranch Market, with over 60 other stores, should've figured out by now.
Here's a look at the secondary set of registers in the back corner, and beverages under the blue wall beyond that.
The grocery aisles are between produce/registers and meat/seafood.
Another entrance to the future food court, which currently is being used for storage. A similar setup is just a couple blocks away at Jmart in the New World Mall, which is a roughly 30,000 square foot supermarket on the second floor of the mall. A food court of about 15,000 square feet is in the basement of that mall.
Frozen foods run in short aisles between the side wall of the store and the main grocery aisles.
And dairy lines the front wall of the side part of the L. The produce and registers are around the corner to the right below.
The decor here is interesting to me. I really like it, but it has more in common with the earlier east coast stores I linked above than the newer ones like Westbury.
A look across the store back over towards the produce side...
Packaged refrigerated foods line the left-side wall of the front section, and the registers are lined up in front of that. They're mostly in a line on one side of the walkway, with some self-checkouts on the other side. It's a space-saving arrangement, I'm sure.
A look across the produce department...
Here you can see the registers aligned in a row rather than lined up next to each other in the more typical way. Again, I'm sure eventually the flow will improve, but there was a lot of bumping into other customers going on at the checkouts as people were trying to figure out how to navigate.
And that brings us to the end of our look at the new 99 Ranch! Before we move along, let's also take a look inside the store it replaced...
Super HK Market was in business for a little over 20 years when it closed (and incidentally, prior to this business I couldn't find any records of other supermarkets previously occupying the building). Above, you can see the entrance facing Main Street, and below is the main entrance on 37th Avenue...
HK had the fresh departments at the back of the store, including a much more expansive produce department than 99 Ranch's current setup (although 99 Ranch is more efficient with space, so I'm guessing the selection is probably similar).
As you can see, the store was aging by the time it closed but not in bad shape. I only got to visit once, but it seemed well-stocked and busy.
All of this area is now 99 Ranch's frozen foods and grocery aisles.
The grocery aisles at HK were in the back-right corner, as I recall.
Obviously, 99 Ranch greatly updated the space, because although it wasn't bad under HK, the new 99 Ranch is a much more attractive, modern store.
A look at the meat and seafood departments at the back of the store...
You can clearly see that HK felt more spread-out than 99 Ranch, which has packed a lot more into the building.
HK definitely felt more old-school, but it had a pleasant feeling and a large selection.
Still, it was clear it was aging, although it wasn't in bad shape inside.
HK had a small indoor mall area at the front, where a few small businesses had shops on either side of the front entrance. This is the area where 99 Ranch's front-end and produce department now are. You can see the few registers to the right below, and that's roughly where 99 Ranch's registers are now, although HK's main registers were at the back.
There was also a staircase to the basement food court in the middle in the picture above. And that's all for this store, but don't miss this weekend's other posts!
Opened: July 2025
Owner: Roger Chen
Previous Tenants: Super HK Market (1993-2024)
Cooperative: none
Location: 37-11 Main St, Flushing, NY
Photographed: July 25, 2025
Super HK Market
Open: 1993-2024
Owner: Anh Tran
Previous Tenants: assorted non-grocery tenants
Cooperative: none
Location: 37-11 Main St, Flushing, NY
Photographed: July 15, 2022
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