A combination of gentrification and plain ol' oldness have prompted the owners of this Ideal Food Basket, which until 2014 was a CTown, to begin a renovation that appears to include both the interior and exterior. The
CTown awning was removed at the 2014 banner change, leaving a rather unattractive
plain gray facade for the next five years before it was finally removed, revealing the beautiful brick that had been under all those other facades.
Despite this change, the store still has a long way to go. While it was clean and well stocked, it was by far the least polished of the five (count 'em, FIVE) Ideal Food Baskets in the neighborhood we'll be touring.
While the store is bright and clean, there are larger structural problems (such as the uneven floor) that will hopefully be fixed in the near future.
The deli is immediately inside the entrance, with produce lining the first aisle. Meats run along the back wall with a little dairy and a little frozen at the end, and dairy and frozen continue in the last aisle. Beer runs along the front wall.
Meats on the back wall.
With the concrete floors and exposed beams in the ceiling, this is
almost a really cool-looking, trendy supermarket. But it's not.
It's hard to tell, but it looks like the checkerboard tile floor is in the process of being removed.
Or, maybe it was just never put in the whole store.
Looking along the back wall towards the first aisle.
As you can see if you trace the bottom of the freezer cases on the left, the floor is more than a little lumpy in this store. Hopefully any renovations that go on will fix that.
Beer in what looks to be very old cases along the front wall.
I'll take a moment to point out before we leave that this Ideal appears to be a single-store operation, in other words, the owners of this Ideal don't own any other supermarkets. The others we'll be seeing in this area are all owned by either Andres Ferreira or Juan Diaz, both of whom own many supermarkets in a variety of locations, so they're a little more of a big-chain experience. That said, I might be wrong as I can't quite track down an owner's name for this location. We have a short detour tomorrow on The Independent Edition before we head over to Prospect Park South for our next Ideal Food Basket!
Ideal Food Basket
1301 Church Ave, Flatbush, Brooklyn, NY
Photographed May 2019
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