Food Bazaar Supermarket
Opened: September 2024
The 2020 Stop & Shop renovation involved downsizing the sales floor a little by cutting off the last six aisles or so on the right side. The bakery was also moved from the front-right corner over to the front-left corner. Now, Food Bazaar has reopened the full sales floor, but removed the first few grocery aisles to expand the produce and meat departments. The layout has seen some other changes, too -- clockwise from the entrance, the former floral department now is a juice bar and the floral department has been downsized and moved over a bit. The bakery service counter is now where Stop & Shop's prepared foods used to be, and the deli has been downsized to accommodate a much larger seafood department in the deli's former spot. Meat now takes up most of the former seafood department, with cold cuts on the back wall where packaged meat used to be. Pharmacy hasn't moved, but a food court is being built around it, as I theorized on an older post. Food Bazaar also has moved the exit door. Previously, the small door you can see below served as both the entrance and the exit, which struck me as a strange choice.
You'll see as we tour this store, we hardly need the "before" and "after" labels, but they're helpful nonetheless. Let's step inside...
The change in the grand aisle is dramatic. Food Bazaar removed the drop ceiling here, making the ceiling much higher. The vast majority of the fixtures are new, although we'll see a handful of reused fixtures in the grand aisle (and the grocery shelving wasn't replaced).
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Below, you can see the bump-out where Food Bazaar has extended the produce department into what used to be the first few grocery aisles.
You can still see certain reference points to orient yourself, too, such as the column right under the green leaf lettuce sign in the above picture. You can see the same column in the "before" picture.
One of the things that strikes me about this particular Stop & Shop design -- the ca. 2020 all-gray interior -- is that food isn't really the focus. Everything is so overwhelmingly gray that the food doesn't really stand out. There's no question it's a different story now...
Some better lighting and a much larger produce selection helps with that, too.
The LivFarms line has been expanded to include several varieties of greens, and these lettuces are grown hydroponically inside the Linden Boulevard Food Bazaar in Brooklyn. (Solata and Uncle Vinny's are not -- those are just regular name brands, although both are local.)
Bakery, prepared foods, and deli lined the left wall prior to the renovation, and now, seafood has been added to that lineup. The deli has been significantly downsized to accommodate that change.
I'm surprised to see that Food Bazaar has actually left the Stop & Shop department signage here, although mostly these departments are still in the same places. The service bakery counter has been moved over to the former prepared foods area.
Only "bakery" and "kitchen" remain from the Stop & Shop decor.
Looking back up towards the front of the grand aisle...
Stop & Shop stores of the early 00s -- when this store got its last big remodel -- had large cheese islands at the back of the grand aisle (see here as an example).
Food Bazaar has kept the cheese island, but with completely new fixtures. It's also now a service counter, where certain cheeses are cut in-store and others are made fresh (like mozzarella).
The deli's previous location is now where seafood is.
As you can see below, the deli has been downsized and the glass display case has been eliminated. Now, it's still a service counter, but the meats and cheeses are stored behind the counter in an upright case rather than up in the front.
And the new seafood counter is just behind that.
Around the perimeter, Food Bazaar removed the lower drop ceiling around the outside that Stop & Shop had.
Stop & Shop didn't have a service meat counter, but (before they stopped cutting meat in-store) there was a butcher window. Food Bazaar's new service meat counter is where that was, and the back half of what used to be the first few aisles is now packaged meats.
This is a setup typical for Food Bazaar, but most chains don't set up their meat departments in a rectangle like this. It's much more common to see it along a perimeter wall.
The new service meat department also includes dry-aged beef, a feature that certain other upscale Food Bazaars have.
Frozen meat and cold cuts are on the back wall where packaged meat used to be, transitioning to dairy at the far end.
Other than adding the usual display of sale and bulk-package items in the first aisle, the grocery aisles are largely very similar.
The shelving wasn't replaced in most aisles, although Food Bazaar did make some small changes, such as adding lighting to the water shelves.
In the 2020 remodel, Stop & Shop cut the store at the end of the milk cooler, which you can see below. Part of that extra space was used for online order staging. This is a large store -- just under 70,000 square feet -- and although Stop & Shop does have many stores that are very large, those stores were largely built to accommodate significant nonfoods and general merchandise selections that aren't offered anymore.
You can still see where the split previously was in the lighting below.
Now, dairy begins on the back wall and then continues down the last aisle. Frozen foods haven't been moved.
Looks like there may have been a leak problem with these freezers. It does look like Food Bazaar didn't replace them, but hopefully any mechanical issues were fixed.
Here's the last aisle of the Stop & Shop, with dairy on the outside.
Now, dairy is a few aisles over and in new cases.
This area at the front of the store would've originally been the bakery, but was closed off in the 2020 remodel. The pharmacy is just to the right in the below picture. Food Bazaar doesn't operate pharmacies, so it's an independent outside business.
The former bakery department appears to be the location of the upcoming food court. Two other Food Bazaars have food courts, including a very large one at the Bronx Terminal Market, and another is coming soon to the Linden Boulevard store. You can see the (now purple) pharmacy below.
There had been a lot of empty space on the front-end, and Stop & Shop seemed to be doing not much with it.
Now, it looks like the area beyond the registers might be space for more food court vendors, and the space next to the registers could be a seating area eventually but for now, part of the space is filled with bulk coffee. This -- like the dry aged beef and the specialty cheese counter -- comes to Food Bazaar via Fairway. Food Bazaar bought three Fairway stores in 2020.
The rest of the front-end is pretty similar, with mostly cosmetic differences.
Customer service remains where it was, but the exit is now to the left of customer service, rather than to the right where it had been.
Notice the customer service sign remains from Stop & Shop, too.
Food Bazaar is also currently working on remodels at the Cropsey and Wyckoff locations in Brooklyn, plus a handful of new stores. This weekend's posts include two other stores worth checking out -- see them here!
Owner: Spencer An
Previous Tenants: Melmarkets Foodtown > Stop & Shop (2001-2024)
Cooperative: none
Location: 132 Fulton Ave, Hempstead, NY
Photographed: December 5, 2025
In October of 2024, Stop & Shop closed 32 stores. Several transitioned to new operators, including four in the New York metro area that went to Food Bazaar. Now, a little over a year later, Food Bazaar is holding the grand opening for its Hempstead location -- the first acquired Stop & Shop to finish its extensive remodel.
The store has been open for business during the remodel, and only closed overnight for the transition to Food Bazaar. Before that, this supermarket was built as a Melmarkets Foodtown, a chain acquired in 1996 by Ahold-owned Edwards. The Edwards stores were rolled into Stop & Shop in 2000-2001, and the store was remodeled shortly thereafter by Stop & Shop. It got another renovation in 2020, although it was a pretty no-frills renovation. You can see my post on the Stop & Shop here, although I've also included "before" pictures throughout this post. Here's an idea of the layout, very much not to scale, courtesy of a directory given out:
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The store came out nice but, this store was never a Foodtown. It was a new build that opened as a S&S in 2000 on what was once an A&S Dept Store that closed and relocated to the Roosevelt Field mall in the later 90s.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the correction!
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