Food Bazaar Supermarket
Opened: October 25, 2026
From October 15 up through the 28th, each day brought another conversion of a Western Beef supermarket to Food Bazaar. You can see the whole list and a lot more information here. Today, let's check out the two new Food Bazaars on Staten Island, which opened on October 24 (the Bay Street store) and October 25 (this store). Let's start with a little background here: This was built as a roughly 53,000 square foot A&P Sav-A-Center, later becoming a Waldbaum's around 2000 which closed in 2003. For just two years, this became an Asian grocer called Kam Man Foods. Around 2008, Western Beef moved from an older location just down the street at 2295 Forest but after a few years, reduced the footprint to around 40,000 square feet. You can take a look inside Western Beef here and here after a renovation.
Food Bazaar's removal of the Western Beef signage, which previously covered most of the storefront, has revealed the outline of the Sav-A-Center sign. As an aside, the left side of this store -- which Western Beef subdivided and sublet to a discount store -- is now vacant again, and I wonder if Food Bazaar has any intention to expand the store back to the original size. As it stands now, the Food Bazaar logo is annoyingly off-center on the storefront. Let's head in!
Food Bazaar has made its presence known quickly, installing their signage and resetting the produce department within days of the store opening (these transitions were overnight, but Food Bazaar bought all the inventory). They've also painted some of the walls beige, which as we'll see is a bit of a theme throughout these conversions. You can compare the current interior to the previous decor linked above. I assume a full renovation is coming, and Food Bazaar has basically said as much.
The layout (so far) hasn't changed, with produce and deli on the left side and seafood at the back of the produce department. Meat is in a walk-in cooler room on the back wall, with bakery, dairy, and frozen on the right side. You can see that Food Bazaar has put some decals over the existing Western Beef branding, but it mostly looks pretty smooth. If you didn't know about the recent change-over and walked into this store, you wouldn't necessarily know it wasn't always a Food Bazaar.
The beige does remove some of the fun colors from the previous Western Beef decor, but I have to assume it's temporary. I do wonder why it was necessary, though.
No real changes yet in the walk-in meat room.
And as with the other locations, Food Bazaar seems to be keeping a lot of the Western Beef breads and baked goods if not all. I imagine one of the biggest changes necessary will be to install service bakery counters in these stores, which tend to have in-store bakeries but not set up as service departments.
It's entertaining to see the Food Bazaar logo next to the Farm Fresh logo, which is/was a Western Beef brand.
In a case like this store, I imagine any further remodeling work done would be discretionary. It doesn't seem to me like there are a lot of urgent problems that need addressing, but if Food Bazaar wants to make changes like expanding the sales floor or adding a service bakery, that's where the main renovation will come in.
Opened: October 25, 2026
Owner: Spencer An
Previous Tenants: A&P (1994-ca. 2000) > Waldbaum's (ca. 2000-2003) > Kam Man Food (2005-2006) > Western Beef (ca. 2008 - 2026)
Cooperative: none
Location: 2040 Forest Ave, Staten Island, NY
Photographed: October 27, 2026
Western Beef's "All Trails Lead to Savings" slogan remains, but now with a Food Bazaar sticker in the middle of it. You can see, though, where they removed the "We know the neighborhood" slogan on the front wall to the left of the All Trails sign. It's going to be interesting what Food Bazaar does with this store, and you can see all the conversions here!
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