Update: Food Bazaar Supermarket - Queens, NY (Ridgewood)

Food Bazaar Supermarket

Opened: 2012

Owner: Spencer An

Previous Tenants: Bohack (open in 1976) > Food Dimensions (2001-2011)

Cooperative: none

Location: 1590 Gates Ave, Ridgewood, Queens, NY

Photographed: September 12, 2025

In addition to the new Inwood Fine Fare, today is all about Food Bazaar. This is one of three stores we're revisiting, two of which are in New York City. The Gates Avenue Food Bazaar is in Ridgewood, Queens, but just actually about two and a half blocks from the Wyckoff Avenue Food Bazaar in Bushwick, Brooklyn, as we're right at the borough line here. Gates appears to have been built as a Bohack, which was in business through at least 1976. I don't know what came here after Bohack, but in 2001, it became a Food Dimensions (owned by Food Bazaar), which switched to Food Bazaar in 2011. Food Bazaar has just wrapped up a major remodel at this store. See my past coverage here.

This store feels pretty large, but is actually only about 27,000 square feet. (There might be a basement, too, though.) You walk through this outdoor sale display to enter the store on the right side, where produce, meat, and seafood take up the grand aisle. Packaged meat lines the back wall, with deli-bakery in the back-left corner. Dairy and frozen are on the left side of the store, with beer in the front-left corner.

The remodel was mostly done when I visited last, but they continued to do some more work, including replacing the remaining produce department fixtures and, most significantly, adding a seafood department. This was the only Food Bazaar without a seafood department. In the remodel, they also added a bakery and relocated the deli from the front-left corner to the back-left corner.

There aren't many interior pictures available online before the remodel, but suffice it to say the store looks very different now than it did. It's now equipped with the standard Food Bazaar decor package, and roughly the standard layout for their stores.

All of the fixtures were replaced in the remodel, and yes I do mean all, including all of the refrigeration and freezers throughout.

And the seafood department is brand-new, although a bit smaller than other Food Bazaar stores'. Still, it's important to remember that this store is still rather small compared to other supermarkets, if large for New York City standards.

Service butcher is at the back of the grand aisle.

It certainly looks like this store does a big business, and there was a lot of meat that several employees were stocking. You can see the racks here. Placer.ai says that this store gets over 90,000 visits a month -- very high for a store of this size -- and the nearby Wyckoff Avenue location gets around 130,000 visits.

If I'm not mistaken, meat was originally in more of a square behind produce as opposed to extending along the back wall as it does now. I believe dairy was previously in this location.

The grocery shelving was replaced in the remodel, too.

And, of course, new freezers. The three posts today give you a clear idea that Food Bazaar goes all-out for remodels. How many big chain stores are replacing every refrigerator, freezer, and grocery shelf in their remodels? Then again, this store was much more rundown than the average big-chain store before the remodel.