Just diagonally across the street from yesterday's Bravo is this Key Food! Like the Bravo, I caught this store in the middle of a renovation. However, this store was nearing the end of its renovation and was probably the impetus for Bravo's remodel. At 13,000 square feet, this former A&P centennial was expanded by an additional 1300 square feet into a neighboring storefront. Though the store originally faced Fulton Ave, its main entrance is now in the rear, where there is a parking lot.
Interesting. No, it's not a
SuperFresh, though that banner is also owned by Key Food stores. You might notice that the "fresh" of Superfresh here is simply a stretched, one-color version of the word that
Met Fresh uses. We enter on this back wall to produce in the first aisle, which runs along the back wall of the store. Meats run along the side wall of the store, with seafood in the front corner. Dairy and frozen are on the front wall of the store, with checkouts running along the side wall we're looking at here. Deli-bakery are actually past the checkouts in the expansion, which is just out of frame to the left above. Yes, like Bravo, this store has an in-store bakery.
Before this was a Key Food, it was an Associated.
It's clear that the store is designed to be shopped from back to front, since produce is at the back of the store (facing the parking lot).
Meats then run along the back wall. I have no concept of how old the floor is, or whether it's left over from some prior tenant. It's in good shape, though, and it doesn't look like the style A&P would have used.
The store is much cleaner and less cluttered than Bravo.
Seafood, a department Bravo does not have, takes up the corner at the front wall.
Ah yes, Key Fresh & Natural decals over Associated aisle markers in a store that's not a SuperFresh but has a sign saying Superfresh. If there's one thing Key Food is good at, it's consistency in branding.
Slightly different flooring pattern here.
Dairy on the front wall of the store, with frozen cases facing and more along the front end (which is really the side wall of the store).
Customer service on the side wall near the front entrance of the store with another brand I'd forgotten about, Food Plaza International.
You can see the exit here, but you can also see that the store now continues beyond it. This new expansion houses a deli and in-store bakery.
Obviously, this section is much nicer than the rest of the store, with brand-new flooring, wall tiling, and ceiling/lighting. I don't believe the rest of the store is to be renovated to match (with the exception of the new Fresh Produce graphics in the first aisle, which we'll actually see again, but not for a long time).
And that's all we have in this downtown Hempstead area! Now we'll head out to the more suburban neighborhoods of Hempstead to see two more stores before moving into Baldwin.
Key Food Supermarkets
386 Fulton Ave, Hempstead, NY
Photographed December 2018
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