The Market Report

In fact, why don't you take your pick from a wide selection of old supermarket baskets here at the PTA Thrift Shop at 125 W Main St, Carrboro, NC? Actually, these generally look pretty recent, with the possible exception of the light blue Mutual Drug basket in the left stack. Thrift stores are often a great place to find old supermarket items like baskets or carts. And practically-new Joseph A. Bank suits for $8 (or maybe I just get lucky!).

Imagine this: a former Advance Auto Parts store is turned into a supermarket. A supermarket with fresh produce, meats, an in-store butcher, a service seafood counter, a deli that also makes sandwiches, an in-store bakery, a salad bar, a hot food bar, a soup bar, dairy, and frozen foods. Plus organic produce, Portuguese foods, Latin foods, eastern Asian foods, and an in-store café. In 12,000 square feet. In a city that's never had a full-size supermarket since its founding. No, it's not too good to be true. It's just the Seabra Foods in Harrison. This store, which opened in 2016, is all of that. Located in the quickly-developing New York City suburb of Harrison, this store is catering largely to the commuter crowd. As discussed before, there are two branches of the Seabra family, one of which owns Seabra Foods ; the other owns Seabra's Market (formerly A Seabra Foods). The entrance is on the right side of the store, leading into a produce department along t...

COMING SOON! The Market Report is starting soon with a brand-new group of stores in southwestern Brooklyn! Posts begin on Monday, November 12th, 2018 with a store tour. Each yellow marker represents a store, and the ones with numbers on them represent that number of stores (too close together to put multiple markers). We're going to start on the north end with Food Universe Marketplace at 4118 3rd Ave, Brooklyn, NY and work our way down. My pictures came from my visit to the area in February 2018. Background on the Area Sunset Park Sunset Park is a highly diverse, middle-class section that has areas of residential neighborhoods, vibrant and bustling business districts, and industrial stretches. Generally, the industry is closest to the water, moving to business districts on 4th and 5th Avenues, becoming largely residential by 6th Avenue. Just to the northeast of Sunset Park is the enormous Greenwood Cemetery, with the smaller but equally green Sunset Park (after which ...

We're back in North Carolina for one more Snapshot today. The Little Burma Asian Market, as seen above, is located at 110 W Main St, Carrboro, NC. A Google review notes that, although the store is small, it carries "a large variety of Asian seafood, veggies/legumes, spices, beverages, candies, noodles, and other staples".

We saw a full tour of the Bravo Supermarket in Orange, NJ back in July. However, my only exterior photos were nighttime pictures. So here's some daytime ones. Overview of the front of the store from Scotland Rd. A look at the all-glass front wall of the store from the overflow parking lot across the street. A few delivery trucks were also parked in the lot across the street, including an old CTown van and this refrigerator truck with an address in Hollywood, FL on the side. The address printed on the side is a residential development, so it's possible I'm reading the address wrong. But it's also possible that this Bravo owner (Nick Gonzalez) also owns one or more Bravo stores in Florida.

Monsey, NY is part of the town of Ramapo, New York. It's home to one of the largest Orthodox Jewish communities in the area, and therefore is home to several Kosher supermarkets. One such example is Evergreen Supermarket, located at 59 NY-59 in Monsey. The company has a second location in Lakewood, NJ. This store looks like one of the more upscale Kosher supermarkets, and it's supplied in part by White Plains, NY-based Krasdale Foods.

Diagonally across the street from the awesome Twin City Supermarket in Elizabeth, NJ is a Stop & Shop as bland and boring as they come. Twin City has so much more personality, and history -- and selection of ethnic and specialty foods. I initially showed this graphic on the tour of Twin City, but I'm repeating it here to show what we're looking at today. As I said in the initial caption to this map, the Stop & Shop was built as an   Edwards Super Food Store in the 1990s, then Stop & Shop opened in the early 2000s. I think the treatment of the stores reflects what they deserve -- Twin City gets a full tour with lots of photos, Stop & Shop gets a few drive-by photos that are either blurry or blocked by a bunch of telephone poles. Fair enough. This store, located at 801 Newark Ave, is huge, cavernous, and deadly boring. At least the prices are low. This store immediately borders the vacant Burry Biscuits property.

We're heading over to Irvington, NJ, a small city in Essex County that also has one of the highest crime rates in the state. Contrary to what you might think, this has not deterred supermarket owners from investing in the township. Supremo opened a store in Irvington around 2005, while City here opened in 2010 under the Super Fine Fare banner, switching two years later. And most recently, James Lee's SuperFresh opened in the former Pathmark in the summer of 2016. This particular property has a long history as a supermarket. Sam Aidekman had operated a Good Deal Supermarket here beginning in the 1960s, and when Good Deal sold to a ShopRite operator in 1976, it's possible this store became a ShopRite briefly. It was definitely later a Mayfair Foodtown before closing in the 1990s. A short-lived C-Town operated here about 2000-2005, and is visible closed in the 2007 Google Maps street view of the property. City Supermarkets looks to be very successful five years afte...