Food Bazaar Supermarket
Now taking a look inside the store in the Western Beef days. Either Food Bazaar immediately upon taking over the store or Western Beef shortly before that must have switched the produce bins from running side to side, to the current single aisle setup front to back.
Here you can see the previous 1906-branded signage.
The light fixtures mostly seem to be all working now, which helps the store feel less old, too.
Somebody, possibly Western Beef between the beginning of 2024 and October of 2026, replaced the flooring on the front-end, as you can see the older blue, black, and white tile here in these December 2023 photos. I would be very surprised if Food Bazaar replaced it so quickly upon moving in here.
Opened: October 17, 2026
Moving on to one of the two stores Food Bazaar bought from Western Beef in Soundview, in the southeastern Bronx (it joins another location that the chain already had there). This one is a bit of a quirky location. It's not on the main thoroughfares -- Bruckner Boulevard, Westchester Avenue, White Plains Road -- but instead just in from Bruckner on Rosedale Avenue, a cross street. It was originally a Finast, later becoming a Top Tomato (in the days when that chain actually still existed and had locations across the region) with a Top Meat Warehouse attached. Western Beef opened up here in the early 1990s. This store is around 30,000 square feet and doesn't seem to have been expanded since it opened, so it's smaller than the legacy Food Bazaar just four blocks west of here.
Produce is in the first aisle on the left side of the store, with deli and bakery in the back-left corner. The meat room is on the back of the store, with dairy and frozen on the right side of the store. Seafood is in the front-right corner. A note about the layout: It's actually rotated, so the produce department runs along the front wall of the store facing the parking lot and the front-end is on the wall facing the rest of the strip mall. If I had to guess, that's a relic of a time when this was probably a freestanding Finast that later had a strip mall added next to it.
Speaking of unusual quirks of this store, let's check out this department signage. It actually appears to have been installed by Food Bazaar to cover up the Western Beef-branded signage, but elsewhere, Food Bazaar simply used stickers over the specific logos. It's possible the idea here is to install a more permanent solution right away, so further renovation isn't required, but it's odd then that the graphics don't match the other temporary and permanent signage Food Bazaar uses. (Plus, I suspect this store likely needs some real renovation work over time, as it definitely feels like an older supermarket.)
You can see the remaining butcher shop sign to the right above with the newer black and white signage on the left. Is it possible Western Beef installed this black and white signage right before selling the store? I certainly haven't seen it in any other store.
No surprises in the meat room, though, which looks basically like all the other stores.
The stores that have open ceilings definitely feel less old than this one, with a drop ceiling throughout, but that's not the only reason this store feels older. I imagine a bit of the refrigeration and freezers likely will be replaced eventually here.
Below and to the left, you can see Food Bazaar's new aisle markers and temporary dairy signage. If the deli and bakery signage were intended to be permanent, I would expect it to look more like this.
Food Bazaar did have to chop their standard aisle marker in half for the last few aisles here, which have a very low ceiling. The small seafood department is also tucked away in the front-right corner.
One other entertaining thing I've seen in these stores: Many of them have a distinctive blue and white tiling pattern on the front wall and around the entrances and exits. In some of the locations, Food Bazaar actually covered up the blue tiles with this strip of decals. That feels extremely unnecessary, but maybe the idea is to just strip the stores of Western Beef colors as soon as possible.
Owner: Spencer An
Previous Tenants: Finast (closed 1980) > Top Tomato / Top Meat Warehouse (1980s) > Western Beef (early 1990s - 2026)
Cooperative: none
Location: 831 Rosedale Ave, Bronx, NY
Photographed: October 30, 2026
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 (tomorrow). Come back to check it out!
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