The Fresh Grocer
Opened: February 13, 2026
Downtown Brooklyn is the new grocery hotspot. ALDI and LIDL have each recently opened new stores, joining a number of existing stores including a Trader Joe's opened in 2017 and several independents. Now, Inserra Supermarkets -- which runs ShopRite, Price Rite, and The Fresh Grocer stores in northeastern New Jersey and Rockland County, New York -- has joined the fray, opening an 18,000 square foot Fresh Grocer in a basement just diagonally across the street from the LIDL. Although the LIDL is a no-frills discount store, it's actually quite a bit larger than this store at 30,000 square feet.
The extremely low-profile storefront is easy to miss on busy Fulton Street, but it belies the extensive full-service supermarket tucked away in the basement. And the storefront might be somewhat boring and easy to miss, but as soon as you enter the foyer, you're greeted with a colorful, cartoonish, and really fun decor package.
Maybe it's because of the basement location with no windows, or maybe it's just for fun, but the decor here is over-the-top, a complete contrast with the nearby discount supermarkets' no-frills interior (and, heck, the bland gray of so many other chain stores).
You enter to the sushi bar and produce department, with meat and seafood at the back. Deli and bakery are in the back-right corner, with a cheese island opposite, and baked goods run along the side wall of the store. Frozen and dairy continue around the rest of the perimeter, with registers in the front-left corner kind of behind the staircase down.
These colored stripes run throughout the store as wayfinders, with each leading to a different department matching the color-coding on the department itself. You can see that the green stripe matches the produce department, for instance...
...which uses the same green on the cases and pillars. Not a whole lot of room for decor here, but Broden Design has used every inch of the available surfaces.
I was skeptical when I heard that Inserra was entering the city with such a small-format store. Inserra's comfort zone is 70,000 square foot suburban supermarkets, not stores a quarter of that size in a city basement. But they've managed to pull it off here with an impressive selection packed into the tiny space.
One particularly intriguing thing here: Dean & Deluca-branded packaged vegetables. Dean & Deluca is a brand once an icon in New York City gourmet retailers, but it went under in 2019. Now, the brand has been licensed by none other than Village Super Market, who is using it for certain items that used to be under the Gourmet Garage brand. This appears to be their answer to the ongoing dispute between them and Wakefern over the Morton Williams chain, in which Village eliminated their use of Fairway and Gourmet Garage-branded merchandise. (Dean & Deluca is not a brand owned by Wakefern, but both Fairway and Gourmet Garage are.)
Packaging on these items confirms they are in fact distributed by Village, although I don't believe any of their Gourmet Garage or Fairway items were ever distributed to other members.
This is an interesting development that I'm gonna have to keep my eye on. Now back to the store itself...
Again, you can see the color-coded stripes bringing customers to each department. I believe this is the first time I've seen this exact system used, which feels reminiscent of the subway maps (I'm sure that's the intention).
This store even has a tiny service seafood counter. None of the other supermarkets in the neighborhood do.
As we continue around the perimeter, the grocery aisles are in the middle. It's kind of an awkward layout, but that's less the fault of the architects and more the result of being in a strange basement space.
Hot food and deli are up next around the perimeter. Hot foods is branded "Culinary Collaborations" here, though it doesn't look like they're currently collaborating with anyone in particular.
Service deli is up next, with a cheese island opposite it.
It's a remarkable feat that this store's design makes it feel more like a suburban ShopRite, just scaled down a little, than a tiny NYC store.
No aisle markers hanging from the ceiling, because the ceiling is so low! Instead, the signage is mounted directly to the shelving.
It even looks like there's a tiny in-store bakery, and plenty of fresh baked goods.
While I'm not certain, it doesn't look like this basement space was previously another retail space. It might've been used as part of a ground-floor store, or maybe just as storage.
Dairy and frozen are at the end of the circuit as we continue moving around the store.
Another notable addition here that most NYC supermarkets don't have: a fairly hefty health and beauty section, which is typically not found in the usual stores in the city like CTown or Key Food.
Frozen foods are in the last aisle. Looking good!
And the registers have a modified setup, so that they're lined up along a series of walls rather than in the usual arrangement.
16 registers total, though I do wonder if this store will ever do the volume to need them all. We'll see how it performs over time -- Inserra has certainly done everything they can to make this store attractive and full-service, but it's still in a tough spot with somewhat limited visibility. It's still new, so I'm sure over time it'll develop its customer base. But I'd certainly love to see more of these in the more urban NYC neighborhoods that aren't good candidates for full-sized ShopRites. (On the other hand, New York's only other Fresh Grocer, on Long Island, closed after just a year, so it's still up in the air whether this smaller format will be a hit.)
That's all for this Fresh Grocer, but see lots more in the city this weekend here!
Opened: February 13, 2026
Owner: Inserra Supermarkets
Previous Tenants: assorted non-grocery tenants
Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.
Location: 523 Fulton St, Brooklyn, NY
Photographed: February 18, 2026
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