Food Bazaar Supermarket
Opened: October 19, 2026
One final converted Western Beef/Food Bazaar store today! This one is way out in southeastern Queens, in fact just three miles from the Elmont location. It's also fairly close to Farmbria Food Center, which Food Bazaar also owns, in Cambria Heights. This is a very unusually-shaped building, with expansions sticking out several sides and bringing it to a total of a little under 40,000 square feet. The building looks to have originally been a location of Times Square Stores, which appears to have been a grocery store connected to a discount store here. TSS went under in the late 1980s and Western Beef was open here by the by the beginning of the following decade.
This is one of the stores that Western Beef pretty extensively renovated shortly before selling the chain, and while I don't know exactly when that renovation was, my estimate is around 2023. You can look inside the store, and get a real sense of Western Beef's previous life as a warehouse discount store, here. Now, Food Bazaar is inheriting a store that's all but brand new.
The produce department, along with deli and bakery, are on the right side of the store. Dairy lines the back wall, with frozen on the left side and the meat and seafood departments in the last aisle on the left side. This store removed its walk-in meat room in the renovation.
It does look like they bake in-store here, but the bakery department is very small, as is the deli.
Not only did this store get a big cosmetic update in its recent renovation, but it looks like a lot of the refrigeration was replaced, too. Again, there's not much Food Bazaar will likely have to do here other than cosmetic changes, if they so choose.
If I remember correctly, the service meat department is in the back-left corner with seafood in the front-left corner, and packaged meat and seafood in between. This is the area I assume was previously the walk-in meat cooler, but there isn't necessarily a very clear dividing line I could detect.
In the renovation, Western Beef added a big sign advertising international food here, which of course is also a focus of Food Bazaar's. I've mentioned this before, but the fact that the two chains had really similar focuses and target markets made this a pretty logical acquisition.
A look across the front-end before we turn the clock back to the Western Beef days...
While I wish I could've gotten to visit this store before its big overhaul, it's still good to have a little bit of a before and after.
The international aisle is double-wide, with lower shelving in the middle.
It looks like the rest of the grocery shelving was either replaced or painted in Western Beef's recent renovation.
Packaged meat on the left side of the store in the last aisle...
Owner: Spencer An
Previous Tenants: Time Square Supermarket (1960s-1980s) > Western Beef (open by 1993, closed 2026)
Cooperative: none
Location: 130-35 Merrick Blvd, Laurelton, NY
Photographed: October 30, 2026
I do wonder how much more Food Bazaar will do here, since it's such a new store, relatively speaking. Also this weekend, we finish coverage of the stores Food Bazaar bought from Western Beef, plus Allegiance opens high-profile stores on Staten Island and in Central Jersey.
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