The Market Report

The Food Emporium Owner: Sang Won Lee Opened:  2021 Previous Tenants:  Penn Fruit > Hill's > Waldbaum's > Food Universe Marketplace Cooperative:  Key Food Stores Location:  196-35 Horace Harding Expwy, Fresh Meadows, Queens, NY Photographed:  June 2021 Our second of three Special Reports today is the brand-new Food Emporium in Fresh Meadows! This store was built as one of the distinctive arched-roof Penn Fruit supermarkets, later taken over by local chain Hill's before that chain was bought out by Waldbaum's. In 2016, as Waldbaum's parent A&P went out of business, this store was sold to Key Food Stores Co-Operative. It operated as a Food Universe Marketplace for a few years before being switched over to former A&P, now Key Food, banner The Food Emporium last month. I wrote in my previous post that this store was owned by Shri Persaud, who owns other Key Food stores, but I'm now questioning that (I forget what my source was on that) and I think...

It's the store you've all been waiting for! Or maybe not, I don't know. Anyway, this store started out in the 1950s as a Penn Fruit. It was later converted to Hill's and then Waldbaum's, receiving a light Fresh 2.0 renovation around 2005ish. Owned by Key Food member Shri Persaud, this store joins two Key Foods, two Food Universes, and a Green Acre Farms in Brooklyn that he also owns. Persaud purchased the store in the 2015-16 bankruptcy of Waldbaum's parent A&P. And although the Food Universe banner was originally created to ease the acquisition of approximately 50 former Associated stores across the city, and continues to be used in Associated Supermarket Group conversions, it is also used in other instances, typically for larger, suburban stores in the city. This store is a whopping 30,000 square feet -- nearly double the size of the Bayside Food Universe . Enough talking, let's head in and see the exposed arch roof in all its glory! The first...