The Market Report

Our last stop on Staten Island before going back up to Manhattan (for the last time!) is this approximately 6300 square foot supermarket. Operating until early 2020 as a Top Tomato Superstore , this and one other location on Forest Avenue were converted to Associated Fresh. I'm assuming ownership changed as well, but that's hard to confirm. Like the Market Fresh we saw, Forest Avenue was previously a Walgreens. This store, more than the other Top Tomato, has the feeling of a small specialty market. You enter to produce and meat on the right side of the store, with two grocery aisles in a small expansion out the front wall (visible in the exterior photograph). To the left is the deli/bakery on the back wall, with a few small aisles in front and dairy/frozen on the far left side. This store tends to lean into the specialty Italian territory, as Top Tomato did. But you can also buy basic grocery items. Oh yeah. That's a little bit of pasta, wouldn't you sa...

Just shy of half a mile from yesterday's ShopRite is this Western Beef, which opened as a Waldbaum's. Around 2005, when Waldbaum's closed, Western Beef moved into the 52,000 square foot space from its older location to the west on Forest Avenue. Today, that property now holds a Harbor Freight Tools . Western Beef's entrance is at the far left end of the storefront, leading shoppers into a spacious produce department. (This store has to be one of the largest Western Beef locations out there.) Deli is in an island that runs along the right side of the produce aisle, with seafood at the back of the first aisle and meat in a walk-in cooler along the back wall. Frozen is in the second-to-last aisle with dairy in the last aisle and bakery in the back corner. Oh yeah, something about this store -- it's one of the brightest supermarkets I've ever been in. I returned to the store a while after photographing it to do some shopping at night, and it's posi...

Original Tenant:  Safeway Address:  1933 Victory Blvd, Castleton Corners, Staten Island, NY Opened:  1950s Closed:  early 1960s Later Tenants:  Finast > Super X > Revco > CVS Photographed:  March 2020 This building was built as a Safeway and later sold to Finast. JoshAustin610 has more details on the drugstore history of the building here . It's an early prototype of the Marina style , and a similar variation we can see in Atlantic Highlands, NJ . Today, the front wall, which would've been entirely glass, has been bricked over. Inside, the A-frame roof remains exposed, although there are is a drop ceiling at the angle. The approximately 14,000 square foot building makes for a very large CVS. We can see some of the windows still exposed on the front wall.

It's the return of Food Connection! We've seen this store before , which is owned by Bill Fani under his company Food Connection, but only as a quick snapshot. We're now returning for a full tour of the store! We have also seen Food Connection's Met Foods and Village Barn in Middle Village, NY. Built as a barrel roof A&P, this store later became a Duane Reade pharmacy before reopening as a supermarket around 2009. It's just north of the SuperFresh , at the corner of Manor Road and Victory Blvd. There is one entrance each at the front and rear of the store, with checkouts running along the wall we're looking at here. Produce lines the back wall, with deli/bakery and seafood lining the front wall. Meat runs along the wall opposite the one we're looking at, with aisles running parallel to the front and back walls. The store is a little less than 10,000 square feet, and although it feels very cramped, it also has a huge selection. Very ...

SuperFresh Opened: 2018 Owner: Sam & Randy Abed Previous Tenants:  CVS > Fresh n Save Marketplace > Key Food > CTown Cooperative: Key Food Stores Location:  778 Manor Rd, Staten Island, NY Photographed:  December 28, 2018 In December 2018, the former CTown at 778 Manor Rd was reopened in short order as a SuperFresh owned by brothers Sam and Randy Abed, who also own another SuperFresh on Staten Island (plus one that has since closed ); SuperFresh locations in Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights, Brooklyn; and a Key Food Marketplace in Bay Ridge . The store first opened its doors in late December, having its offical grand opening the following May. I visited the store in the first or second week it was in business, and it was clearly at the very beginning but still a lot ahead of where CTown left the store. Our look at this SuperFresh is a little shorter than our tour of the CTown because that coverage was very extensive. I just wanted to show how the st...