Special Report: Lincoln Market - Brooklyn, NY (Williamsburg)

Lincoln Market

Opened: August 27, 2026

Owner: Khalid Innab

Previous Tenants: Urban Market (2013-2017) > City Acres Market (2017-2025)

Cooperative: Key Food Stores

Location: 11 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY

Photographed: September 4, 2026

Lincoln Market is at it again, this time with a new 16,000 square foot store on the waterfront of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, just across the East River from Lower Manhattan. The New York native chain started in 2016 with a location on Lincoln Road in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, here in Brooklyn, and now has nine locations in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan (plus a much larger, flagship one under construction in Hell's Kitchen). Here in Williamsburg, the chain takes over a spot that's been a supermarket since 2013, but with some interesting twists. Let's check out this new store.

There's an entrance at either end of the store, one near produce/seafood (the one you can see above) and the other on the dairy/frozen/beer side, the left side of the store. Produce and seafood are on the right side, with meats in the back-right corner. Deli, bakery, and prepared foods line the back wall, and dairy/frozen are in the last few aisles on the left side with beer and cheese in the last aisle.

So this store opened in 2013 as an Urban Market, a Key Food brand, owned by Jason Chung and Colin Xie. Four years later, for reasons not entirely clear, the store left Key Food and therefore dropped the Urban Market name. From 2017 until its closure in 2025, it was called City Acres Market and supplied by General Trading (Fine Fare and Shop Fair). In fact, for a while this store's circular was basically the same as the Fine Fare circular. This particular location must not have done well, because although City Acres has since added two additional locations, this store closed in late 2025. It appears that Lincoln Market bought the store at the bankruptcy auction.

Now here's where things get interesting. Lincoln Market owns eight other stores, all affiliated with the Associated Supermarket Group (ASG). The same owner also owns one Associated. But this Lincoln Market is instead affiliated with Key Food. What gives? Honestly, I'm not sure. Is it possible there's some restriction, if the 2013 lease were between the developer and Key Food (and Chung and Xie sublet from Key Food, which isn't too unusual)? Or are all Lincoln Market stores soon to switch to Key Food from ASG? What I can tell you is that this store uses what's basically the standard Key Food circular and is fully stocked with Key Food's storebrand products, Urban Meadow, while the other Lincoln Market stores' circular for this week comes from ASG and advertises their products, Avenue A.

I spotted some Cadia natural food products on the shelves here, which I've seen in ASG stores but I'm not sure I've seen in other Key Food member stores. They come from KeHE, a natural foods distributor. And both Key Food and ASG are supplied by C&S Wholesale Grocers.

Although the decor in most of the store is new, this seafood signage is left over from the previous tenant. The store didn't get any major renovations between City Acres' closure and Lincoln Market's opening, but just a minor refresh.

The produce and seafood departments are in their own space on the right side of the store, then the grocery aisles are to the left of that. There's a lower ceiling across the back of the store, under which the meat, bulk foods, and deli/bakery departments are.

The decor here matches other Lincoln Market locations, but the setup is left from Urban Market/City Acres.

A very large Urban Market logo was on the back wall here, and it wasn't swapped out when the store changed to City Acres. Now, Lincoln Market has (thankfully) removed it entirely and replaced it with their own logo.

In my opinion, Lincoln Market is an excellent operator. I didn't note any substantial differences between this Key Food Lincoln Market and the ASG Lincoln Markets, other than the storebrand and sales of course.

The "cheese monger" sign here is also left over from the Urban/City Acres days.

I don't know whether Lincoln Market will succeed here when City Acres couldn't, but they have the advantage of being part of a larger chain. It's still only nine locations, but that's three times the number City Acres had.

Now for a look around City Acres before it closed, with pictures from 2024...

City Acres Market

Opened: 2017

Owner: Colin Xie & Jason Chung

Previous Tenants: Urban Market (2013-2017)

Cooperative: Retail Grocers Group/General Trading

Location: 11 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY

Photographed: January 22, 2024

The building was built from the ground up in 2013, so it's still a very new store. For that reason, Lincoln Market didn't have to do much to it, and it mostly looked great when I was there the first time.

The setup is basically the same, but it looks like Lincoln Market replaced or fixed up these wooden produce tables, and swapped out some of the decor in produce.

The meat department at the back of the first few aisles, which I neglected to get a picture of this time around...

Although the store was looking good when I took these pictures -- it definitely didn't feel like it was under two years away from bankruptcy -- you can see some holes on the shelves or shallow stock, with only one or two rows of the product. It wasn't noticeable enough to really register for me at the time, but from what I've heard, it got worse over those last two years or so.