The Market Report

Fine Fare Supermarkets Owner: Hammad Siyam Opened:  1987 Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative:  Retail Grocers Group Location:  601 4th St, Union City, NJ Photographed:  December 2020 This 12,000 square foot Fine Fare is a pretty substantial neighborhood supermarket for this part of Union City. We're at the far southern tip of Union City here, with the rest of the stores we saw in Union City up to the north of route 495. We're also just blocks from the Jersey City border. I know that this Fine Fare opened under its current ownership in 1987, but I'm not sure what it was before that -- the building has almost definitely been a supermarket for its entire life. As we can see, it's clearly a popular spot for food shopping. Produce lines both sides of the first aisle, with meat and deli on the back wall and dairy in the last aisle. Frozen is in the middle of the store, and the front right corner of the store was closed off in preparation for a pharmacy that was to...

Probably the two most common reuses for 1950s supermarkets are dollar stores and pharmacies. We saw an example of the former yesterday, and we'll see another example today. ACME tower sign still intact, with a clear and readable Dollar General sign. Acme Style has an excellent and in-depth post on this store, which you can read here . (I'm very excited that I only overlap with Acme Style on two posts of the five this week!) My photos are from December 2017. Not hard to picture this as a supermarket, as Acme Style points out. The location is at 2010 John F. Kennedy Blvd, Union City, just about six blocks north of the North Bergen Food Bazaar . In our Hudson County group , our southernmost point was about fifteen blocks north of this store.

The circular is a pretty mundane aspect of any given supermarket. It's a useful but generally unattractive, necessary part of the business. So I appreciate it when a supermarket doesn't take itself too seriously and can use something like the circular to joke around a little. Remember the Fine Fare on 33rd St in Union City? If you don't, check out the tour here . Their circular gives an...introduction to the store's quality standards. This panel reads: "We have the largest and freshest eggs, the whitest milk, the coldest ice, the spiciest peppers, the clearest water, the sweetest sugar, and the saltiest salt in the area."

Because I have way too much free time, I'm proud to introduce The Market Report's first... MUSIC VIDEO! If you couldn't get enough of our Hudson County group, then you're in luck! Now, you can see random photos from the group in no particular order compiled in a music video for no reason other than... "why not?" Seriously, though -- I hope this is at least a little fun, because I think I might make some more going forward. Thoughts?

It's now time for our... LAST HUDSON COUNTY STORE! WITH A SPECIAL SURPRISE... In case you missed anything, you can always visit the Blog Directory and search by town name. But now for today's tour... This, if anything, would be the only repeat of banners we've seen in this section (and I've pretty much covered everything within this range, except for a few stores to the east). And that's only if you count the closed Fine Fare up by 70th St. This Fine Fare is probably an old chain supermarket. It's even a possible former Acme, given the tower shown on the corner here. While it's possible that it was installed by a later tenant, it's rather unlikely. This supermarket became a Super Supermarket, which also replaced a Mayfair Foodtown that replaced the Acme in Orange. So it's possible the same thing occurred here. In any event, Super closed or was replaced somehow by Super Fine Fare between 2007 and 2012. Fine Fare appears to have ex...

Another longtime Union City institution is this store, which was previously Mi Bandera ( my flag ) Supermarket (later simply Bandera). It's been said that this was the first supermarket in the US to separate foods by country of origin rather than by type, a practice now followed by countless other ethnic-based stores, including Food Bazaar. The Bandera operation included the supermarket on the ground floor and a Cuban restaurant on the second floor. However, in about 2014, New York City-based A&E Supermarket Group bought out the venerable Bandera Supermarket and completely renovated it, bringing it under their City Fresh Market family of stores.  The curved glass section is seating for the restaurant. There is a very small parking lot on the side of the building, which actually borders Despensa del Ahorro on the side. The entrance is on the side of the building facing the parking lot. You enter and turn right to walk up the grand aisle, which runs along this side...