Food Bazaar Supermarket
Opened: 2024
It's time to return (yes, again, but hopefully for the last time for a while) to the Cropsey Avenue Food Bazaar. Since Food Bazaar acquired this store from Stop & Shop in September 2024, they've slowly but surely redone it from floor to ceiling. You can get a sense of just how extensive the changes are by comparing how Stop & Shop looked shortly before it closed to the pictures in this post, though I've been posting all throughout the renovation process. Now, the store is officially done and has held its grand opening while also extending its hours to 24/7.
Owner: Spencer An
Previous Tenants: Pathmark (1970-2015) > Stop & Shop (2015-2024)
Cooperative: none
Location: 2965 Cropsey Ave, Brooklyn, NY
Photographed: July 15, 2026
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Okay, so generally when Food Bazaar has done grand openings recently, they hand out a handy little diagram of the layout. I didn't see any when I visited this store, so we make do with my efforts in Canva based on this diagram from before the renovation. Obviously the produce-in-the-middle layout was a holdover from Pathmark, which occupied the space from 1970 to 2015. Their pharmacy was in the front-right corner. Now, produce and meat are on the right side, with a juice bar and floral occupying the former bakery. Cheese and a bulk department are just inside the entrance. Deli and bakery have been combined in the back-left corner.
The first grocery aisles, which you can see to the left above, are in the space of the former produce department. Now, the produce department has been expanded and shifted into the front-right corner. The former bakery is now juice and flowers...
...and the former grocery aisles to the right of produce are gone, replaced by the new produce area. You can see where the former pharmacy was, which now has a lower ceiling up in the front corner.
Clearly, this side of the store was extensively redone. The rest of the store feels much more like a slightly freshened-up Stop & Shop or Pathmark rather than a new store.
Food Bazaar has done only minor remodeling in Carlstadt, while Piscataway closed in January for a more extensive remodel. (See here for both stores.)
Here's roughly the same area as above, when Stop & Shop was still in the house.
The former beer area is now the meat department, with bakery going into the former meat area. And you can see, when you compare these pictures to the most recent post I'd made previously, that there's a lot more decor that hadn't yet gone in but now is up.
Cold cuts and frozen seafood in part of the former meat department, with bakery to the left of it.
This is as good a time as any to mention that Food Bazaar apparently now has a song that they play in stores, I guess. Not a jingle, but a full-length song. I have to assume it's AI-generated, and it's both terrible and really hilarious (unintentionally, of course). I definitely didn't think I needed AI people singing about "valued associates" or whatever words they forced into an otherwise fairly normal-sounding pop song. And I do mean full-length. It was still going when I left the store, after two verses, two choruses, and what I can only assume is an AI guitar solo.
It makes me think of a comparison a writer I know has made after finding an old book on how to cook fruit in your microwave he found at a yard sale or something. When technology (AI or microwave, or anything else) is new, nobody really knows how to use it well and they're just experimenting with it. There are a lot of great uses of AI and microwaves, but I can assure you a four-minute Food Bazaar song is not one of the best uses of AI, just as we now understand that we're never going to fire up the microwave to cook kiwis. But hey, if you ever want to hear what grocery words they could rhyme, you know where to hear the song.
Entertaining AI tangents aside, here we are in the new Market Pantry department. Not only is this a new feature in this particular location, it's fairly new to Food Bazaar in general. The bulk foods are based on Fairway's program and are now in certain Food Bazaars, and in this store, they've also condensed the coffee into the bulk foods area instead of adding a separate department for it. This replaced the former customer service counter, and while I'm not sure, it looks like customer service has been consolidated into one of the registers.
New bakery and hot food sections next to the existing deli in the back.
Even though dairy and frozen are in the same location as they were during the Stop & Shop (and Pathmark) days, they've been extensively redone, including all new fixtures. Here's frozen and dairy before.
Beer, soda, and snacks are now up in the front corner where Stop & Shop had kitchenwares previously, and I believe Pathmark had bread before that. Well, that wraps up our extensive coverage of this remodel, and now maybe this means we'll see progress in Piscataway or Carlstadt. For now, there's a lot to see this weekend!
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