Shop Fair Supermarkets
In case you were wondering, Shop Fair has almost no Asian products -- there's a small section in one grocery aisle -- and those who used to buy Asian groceries at V&C are probably now shopping at Food Bazaar, which just expanded its Asian food selection. Check out that and more this weekend here!
Opened: June 7, 2025
By now, if you've been reading The Market Report for long enough, you're familiar with the core New York City-area grocery cooperatives. In no particular order: Krasdale Foods (CTown and Bravo), Key Food Stores (Key Food, Food Universe, SuperFresh, The Food Emporium, Food Dynasty), America's Food Basket (AFB and Ideal Food Basket), Associated Supermarket Group (Associated, Met, Pioneer, and Compare), Allegiance Retail Services (Foodtown, Freshtown, Pathmark) and Retail Grocers Group (Fine Fare and Shop Fair). Most of these groups run relatively small-format, urban supermarkets. Some, like Key Food and Allegiance, have a number of larger, suburban locations; some (like Krasdale) are staunchly against that. Retail Grocers, the group of independent stores supplied by General Trading out in Carlstadt, NJ, works with a few larger stores out in New Jersey, but here in Hempstead, they've just opened one of their largest locations yet.
This new Long Island supermarket is also the largest under the Shop Fair brand, which currently is used on around two dozen supermarkets. (Their website does not include all the locations, so it's a bit difficult to keep a consistent count.) Originally constructed as a Waldbaum's and then an Asian grocer called V&C Supermarket for years, the 38,500 square foot space underwent very extensive renovation before reopening as Shop Fair in early June.
You enter on the left side of the brand-new, very attractive interior to the grand aisle. Produce is on the left side, with deli, bakery, and hot food in an island facing. Seafood and meat are on the back wall, with a service seafood counter in the back-left corner of the store and a service butcher counter in the back-right corner. Frozen and dairy are on the right side of the store, with beer in an alcove on the front wall. There's a seating area between the entrance and the registers on the front wall, too.
Because of this store's larger size, there are a number of features here that aren't typically found in other Shop Fair stores, including others owned by Anibal Rodriguez, the owner of this store. For instance, this Shop Fair has a large bakery department, a juice bar, sushi, and a hot food bar.
Looking up towards the front of the grand aisle. You can see that the design, while similar to the smaller and older stores, is scaled up and really well-done here. The store is absolutely beautiful. And although this is very significantly larger than the average Shop Fair -- it's over five times the size of that Hudson Heights store -- it doesn't seem that Shop Fair is struggling to fill the large space. As you'll see as we tour the store, there's no empty space and no space wasted. There are several large Fine Fare stores on Long Island, although they're under different ownership.
They're also still clearly focused on keeping the store looking pristine, especially here in the produce department (sorry for that one head of lettuce that seems to have fallen).
Seafood at the back of the grand aisle, with packaged meat and seafood on the rest of the back wall.
The grocery aisles are the one place you can tell these larger stores don't come naturally to Shop Fair. They're not streamlined in the way your average big-chain store's aisles are. I saw spices in at least four places, for instance -- the international aisle, the produce department, and two other grocery aisles. Similarly, some departments are slightly awkwardly laid out, such as bakery. There's a service bakery, with fresh cakes and pastries, but fresh bread and rolls are at the deli. Packaged bread is in the grocery aisles, but packaged commercial bakery cakes are in the dairy/frozen department. Fresh Latin American pastries, which come in from an outside bakery, are in yet another spot. These aren't major problems, but it's definitely clear the owners aren't used to having this many options to find spots for. Still, the execution otherwise across the store seems really good, especially impressive for an operator comfortable with smaller stores in general.
There's a large international department, and the selection across the store definitely isn't what you might expect in a ShopRite or Stop & Shop. In fact, the former Stop & Shop a block away is now a Food Bazaar, and they're definitely playing the role of mainstream supermarket in town while this one focuses on international foods. But both have full selections of both categories. As an interesting aside: a developer working on a property in Inwood, Manhattan has had trouble finding a grocery tenant because of a Food Bazaar in progress across the street. A document they submitted to the city planning board said, in part: "no other food store operators expressed interest in ... the development site for the same reasons that led the original operator to terminate the contract, with the difficulty of competing successfully with the Food Bazaar as their primary concern."
Even though we're months after the store's opening, the aisles are all looking absolutely pristine.
You won't see anyone much in these pictures, but I was here on a weekday morning, not a peak shopping time. It definitely seems that this store does a solid volume.
A large butcher counter is in the back-right corner of the store.
I can't detect any fixtures left over from V&C, and it looks like everything in this Shop Fair is brand-new. It looks like V&C's meat and seafood were on the right side, roughly where dairy and frozen now are in the Shop Fair.
I also particularly like this department signage.
An absolutely massive wall of values lines the inside of the last aisle, with a few shelves in the middle for bulk and sale items. Dairy is on the outside of the last aisle.
Looking towards the back of the store...
In the front corner, to the left below, is beer and some baked goods. Customer service is between that area and the front-end.
And a look across the front-end, which looks really good.
Owner: Anibal Rodriguez
Previous Tenants: Waldbaum's > V&C Supermarket
Cooperative: Retail Grocers Group
Location: 12 N Franklin St, Hempstead, NY
Photographed: July 18, 2025
It's nice to see a brand-new, independent supermarket so extensively renovating an old, tired former grocery store. I mean, this is what V&C's front-end looked like.
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