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Special Report: Food Bazaar Supermarket - Queens, NY (Jackson Heights/Corona)

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Food Bazaar Supermarket
Opened: May 28, 2026
Owner: Spencer An
Previous Tenants: none; Finast (closed ca. 1980) > CTown (1981-early 1990s) > Pioneer (late 1990s) > Food Bazaar (ca. late 1990s-2023) previously on property
Cooperative: none
Location: 34-20 Junction Blvd, Corona, NY
Photographed: May 29, 2026 and May 30, 2026
Welcome back to Jackson Heights (or Corona -- we're right on the border here). It's been a long time, but way back in January 2020, I posted the Food Bazaar that was here, a roughly 25,000 square foot store with a large parking lot. The store was pretty nice, but old -- in fact, it was built back around 1960 as a Finast. By 1981, it had become a CTown. Now, in 1988, Francis An had opened a CTown in a former Waldbaum's about a mile south. At some point, he also took over this CTown, and in the late 1990s, both stores became Pioneers, I believe along with one in New Jersey. By around 2000, they left CTown and were rebranded Food Bazaar, becoming the beginning of the Food Bazaar chain. In 2012, his son Spencer An took over the business, and last fall, Spencer An ended his time as the president of Food Bazaar with his longtime second-in-command, Edward Suh, coming in as president. Spencer An and his family still own the chain, though. In fact, since about 2020, Spencer An has also owned this property, and in 2023, the old supermarket closed to be demolished. It's now been replaced with this multi-level development with a much larger, roughly 40,000 square foot Food Bazaar on the ground floor and parking in a garage above the store.
Here's a handy layout diagram handed out at the opening. Makes my job easier!
So the wavy beam thing is where the parking garage is, which is above the supermarket. You enter around the back, and here's a look at those wavy beams from inside the garage. Pretty cool!
Although the store was packed yesterday, when I returned after initially photographing it on Friday, the garage was mostly empty. Seems like a lot of people walk, and it also seems like some might not know the garage is here. It's not exactly easy to get to.
Food Bazaar has been working with a developer called Shorewood to redevelop some of their older properties and build new ones. In fact, Food Bazaar is working on new locations in Newark, Manhattan, and the Bronx (actually two). In most cases, Food Bazaar also owns or partially owns the real estate. That's a major leg-up in NYC's extremely expensive and competitive market. So that's the big picture, and now let's check out this spectacular new store!
This is a new-build store, and you can tell there's a big difference between this and a renovated store, although the decor is mostly the same. Like so many other locations, the decor here is ultra-deluxe, with no expense spared for the design. What other chains put this much budget into decor alone?
There's a lot here, and it's not particularly spacious despite the fact that it's much larger than the old store. That's just because of how much is jammed into the space.
The emphasis, obviously, is on the perimeter here. The floor plan isn't to scale, of course, but produce, meat, and seafood together probably do take up close to a third of the sales floor (and that's not including cheese, deli-bakery, and the in-store tortilleria).
Slightly different produce fixtures here compared to what I'm used to seeing, but it's definitely a more premium look.
Speaking of design, I love these circular hanging designs. Again, you can tell they went all-out on decor.
This store opened on Thursday, and will hold an official grand opening in early June.
One very minor note about the setup here: Instead of the produce price tags hanging from brackets above the produce tables, the tags are now attached to the tables themselves. You can see the previous setup at Linden Boulevard in the link above. This is the first store to open with Suh as president of the chain, and because he's been around for years, I wouldn't expect the chain's strategy to drastically shift. Still, I've seen some minor changes at the other locations -- but nothing more than resets and rearranging.
One thing that's particularly well-done here: the lighting. You can see that the store's environment is extremely colorful, but the produce itself still stands out because of the lighting focused on it.
The decor does get less exciting as we leave the produce and seafood departments, but still it's pretty awesome throughout the store.
I mentioned in my post for the ShopRite of East Orange that Village seems to have a renewed focus on exactly what customers are looking for in each neighborhood. The same is definitely true of Food Bazaar, which has added some new features here like the in-store tortilla maker, or these giant cases of frozen oxtail specifically packed for the store...
Bogopa, the company that owns Food Bazaar, has been buying a lot of other real estate including laying down more than $100 million for its flagship location in Long Island City. Meanwhile, they've also opened up a new distribution center in northern New Jersey. Vertical integration -- and in the high-cost, competitive New York market, it makes sense to control as much of the business as possible.
The Cheese of the World department here is split in two: half of it is the gourmet cheese offerings available in a lot of stores, and the other half is fresh Latin cheeses that are less common to see in full-service cheese departments like this.
More cheese, and the rest of dairy, lines the back wall.
The grocery aisles are short here because the store is shallow but wide. Excluding produce and meat, there are 19 aisles -- that's a lot for a 40,000 square foot store, but that's because they're shorter.
These red endcaps are not something I've seen in Food Bazaar before, and I actually wonder if they're brought in from one of the Stop & Shop locations they acquired. (See here.)
A short frozen foods aisle with the rest on the back and side walls.
Beer not yet in, and so that aisle so far is just full of soda and things.
The store takes up this full city block, so the side wall here in the last aisle has some nice windows.
This corner is also home to the tortilleria, which makes fresh tortillas (and churros). They were churning them out when I visited, and the freshly-packaged tortillas are on the table next to this corner.
Deli and bakery, along with a hot food bar, are also up in this corner.
The previous store on this property had an in-store bakery, so it's logical that the new one does too. Food Bazaar has tried to add in-store bakeries to most of their locations, but some still don't have them.
And here's a look across the front-end, with some awesome details on the columns. It's really interesting to see how they take normal building elements like columns and make them more visually interesting.
Looking back over in the other direction...
Food Bazaar has definitely done it again with another impressive new store here, and it's fun to see the ways they bring in slightly different selections in each neighborhood. Check out this weekend's other posts here!

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