Foodtown
Opened: October 2, 2026
We are here in Bushwick to round out this weekend's news coverage -- or maybe, depending on the order you're reading this in, we're just getting started. Either way, let's tour this brand-new Foodtown, built in a former Rite Aid at the corner of Halsey and Broadway. After a real slump, Allegiance is back at it with several notable openings. In addition, Village Marketplace over in South Orange has joined, and when I visited most recently it was looking great (and busy) around a year after its opening. The cooperative is also apparently in discussions to add a fourth Pathmark, this time in Delaware. With all of this activity, it's clear that the group is firmly out of its slump and charging ahead.
This 15,000 square foot store joins two other Bushwick Foodtowns. One is completely across the neighborhood on Noll Street, and the other is just about a dozen blocks northwest on Broadway. Both that one and this new store appear to be affiliated with the Brooklyn Harvest Markets group, which owns stores under that name and the Foodtown banner (I'm not certain of the Broadway Foodtown's connection to Brooklyn Harvest, but I've seen Brooklyn Harvest-branded products on the shelves there). That group seems to be owned by the Elayyan and Abed families, and has opened a handful of other new stores recently.
All three Bushwick Foodtowns are almost identical in size, all measuring about 15,000 square feet. How they use the space is different, though. You can see that the Noll Street location has much more space dedicated to higher-end service counters, while this one is more of the basics. It feels much more like a mainstream supermarket -- in a good way, not to say that it's missing things. It feels well-run and crisp, although some of that may still just be from the recent opening. Still, they're off to a strong start here.
The produce department is on the right side of the store, along with baked goods (no in-store bakery), cheese, and a deli/sushi counter. Meat lines the back wall, with dairy and frozen on the left side and beer in the front-left corner.
This decor is almost identical to the Bay Ridge location I linked above, which makes sense as the stores are related and opened practically weeks apart.
This is a crowded supermarket landscape, though, and a handful of reviews I've seen on Google Maps and social media so far have noted that this store doesn't appear to bring all that much new to the party. We're two blocks south of an old-school Key Food and two blocks north of a Key Food-affiliated Brooklyn Farm Marketplace, formerly Pioneer. Four more blocks south of Brooklyn Farm is another Key Food store, the Marketplace of Bushwick, and by the way all of those Key Food-affiliated stores are under different ownership from each other. Five blocks north, you have another cluster, with a small independent called Organic Fresh Market and two more Key Food stores: a very small one called Howard Marketplace and a much larger one across the street called Global Farm, which shares an owner with Brooklyn Farm. It's certainly brave of this Foodtown's owners to storm right into the middle of ridiculously solid Key Food territory, but it's good to have some competition. You can see all of the grocery stores in Bushwick here.
Dairy and frozen are in the last aisle.
This store felt quite a bit more spacious to me than some of the others in this neighborhood, despite it being around the same size with around the same offerings. It's possibly just streamlined for the grand opening, but it's pleasant.
One line for all the registers, and to their credit, two managers were keeping an eye on the line to make sure it was organized and moving.
It's nice to see a new supermarket here, although it's not exactly a neighborhood in need of lots more shopping options given the many similar supermarkets that are already nearby. Still, we can add it to the list of former Rite Aids nicely repurposed into modern supermarkets! Speaking of, there are two more to see this weekend, plus plenty in addition...
Opened: October 2, 2026
Owner: Fouad Elayyan
Previous Tenants: Rite Aid
Cooperative: Allegiance Retail Services
Location: 960 Halsey St, Brooklyn, NY
Photographed: October 7, 2026
Saturday
- LIDL and ALDI each open New York City stores
- A Bronx independent moves next door and rebrands
- A former Harlem Rite Aid becomes a shiny new supermarket
Sunday
Perhaps a silly thing to comment on and perhaps it's been done elsewhere and I just haven't noticed... but I like the eggs and bacon positioning and signage. Occasionally those both will get their own separate signs, but they feel secondary to the larger dairy and lunchmeat signs. Or many times they won't get signs at all. This makes them feel like their own distinct, purposeful department.
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