ASR Food Market
Opened: February 2026
Welcome to Philadelphia! It's been a while since The Market Report has stopped in Philly, hasn't it? Well, I've gone back to the city (and its environs) a few times lately and there's some really interesting supermarkets in and around -- it's just that it's quite a distance from where I live. So let's check out one of the most interesting stores that opened back in February!
I write about a lot of international supermarkets here on The Market Report, but we don't hear much about Uzbek supermarkets (other than Tashkent, of course). Philly's largest halal supermarket is this Uzbek market, which takes the place of a former Big Lots. But ASR isn't a new store -- in fact, they moved from a nearby location in a former Wawa.
ASR's previous space was just 6300 square feet, while this one is about 26,000. Not huge, but much larger than most central Asian supermarkets. And it returns a supermarket to this strip mall, which had a SuperFresh and then a Food Basics -- more on the history shortly.
ASR's produce department (with suspended apple baskets!) is in the front-left corner, with meat and seafood counters along the rest of the first aisle. But the big deal is at the back of the store: like Tashkent, ASR has a massive prepared foods department with row after row of cold salads, hot entrees, food cooked to order, and pastries (both sweet and savory, such as samsa). The bakery is in the back-right corner, with frozen and dairy on the right side of the store. The registers are lined up on the other side of the half-wall you can see to the right above, with a cafe and coffee shop in the front-right corner.
The selection here is mostly specialty foods, and that's in large part due to the large community of central Asian and eastern European people living in this area. There are a number of other similar markets in the neighborhood.
The store's design is simple but attractive. And smoked fish is a big deal here...
To-order service counters on the back wall (I was here in the morning before lunch, so they weren't quite running yet).
And several rows of self-serve bars are opposite that.
The selection is massive, with lots of salads and pickled items.
It's really fun to see what these independent supermarkets are doing with food service as so many big-chain supermarkets are cutting or reducing their attention to food service.
Zoom in to take a good look at these: self-serve sweet pastries in the bakery department.
And lots of breads in the bakery, too.
The service bakery counter is on the right-side wall of the store. These service counters (meat/seafood, prepared foods, and bakery) form a horseshoe shape along the back of the store with the grocery aisles and self-service food bars in the middle.
And dairy is on the right side along with frozen.
It looks like all the fixtures here were new when ASR opened. I don't think they brought anything over from the old location, since I don't believe there was a gap.
Looking back over towards produce...
And here's a look at the registers, with produce on the other side of this half-wall...
The cafe, complete with its own tree, is in the front-right corner. It's really interesting to see what ASR has done with this former Big Lots -- to me, this is certainly the more fun (and delicious) use of the space!
Now for a look at the history...
A&P built this building as a roughly 70,000 square foot SuperFresh in 1997, but it didn't last and closed in 2002. Three years later, A&P reopened about 40,000 square feet of the store as a Food Basics discount store, and that's the left half that's now the gym. Food Basics was in business for a decade, closing with all of the A&P stores in 2015. Big Lots took the right half of the SuperFresh, which is what's now ASR.
Opened: February 2026
Owner: Aziz Khan
Previous Tenants: SuperFresh (1997-2002) > Big Lots (ca. 2005-2024)
Cooperative: none
Location: 15501 Bustleton Ave, Philadelphia, PA
Photographed: April 1, 2026
Original Grocery Tenant: SuperFresh
Address: 15501 Bustleton Ave, Philadelphia, PA
Opened: 1997
Closed: 2002
Later Tenants: Food Basics (2005-2015) > non-grocery tenants
Photographed: April 1, 2026
Here's a look at this weekend's other posts!
Saturday
- New ASG supermarkets open in the Bronx and Brooklyn
- A new Metro Acres Market opens in Manhattan's East Village
Sunday
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