We're heading today to the basement of the former Waldbaum's we
saw yesterday. This property was previously a CVS before becoming in 2011 a
Fresh N Save Marketplace, a Key Food affiliate based in Queens owned by Joe Zariyeh. It was later converted to just plain Key Food, although I don't know who owned it.
In fact, the shape of the CTown sign is just the Key Food logo with a new panel in it, much like we saw in
Hempstead. The switch to CTown happened around 2015, and I don't know whether ownership changed between Fresh N Save and Key Food, or between Key Food and CTown.
Despite the best efforts of the various tenants, it remains the fact that this is a 16,000 square foot, low-ceiling, kind of dingy space. And it can be quite hard to see from the road unless you know what you're looking for. Though the decor was mostly the same from Fresh N Save at the time of my visit to the CTown, it was obvious the store had declined a lot, though the owners were attempting to improve certain parts.
You enter to the produce department, with deli/bakery at the back of the first aisle. Meats run along the rest of the back wall with dairy in the second-to-last aisle and frozen in the last aisle and the front wall.
You can see the efforts to bring the store back: serving fresh egg sandwiches in the deli, replacing closed registers with more stock, filling sparse produce cases with beer.
But it's still clear that the store wasn't operating at anywhere near 100% capacity at the time of my visit, which by the way was on the way back home to NJ from
Bay Ridge.
And as usual, the service departments are more than a little sparse.
The deli is still pretty nice, but clearly not full. And I'm assuming the situation of this department declined until the store closed in late 2018.
The bakery counter at the other end and what I'm assuming was a hot food bar were completely empty, and the cheese/bakery island was mostly empty.
Meanwhile, the service butcher case was completely empty, but the packaged meats were fully stocked.
Meanwhile, the grocery aisles were fully stocked. There is a public housing complex across the street from this store, along with a dense residential neighborhood surrounding it on all sides, meaning there's a huge customer base here but they were choosing to go elsewhere. We'll see one of the other options in a few days!
I caught the CTown relatively early in its life, so they were attempting some turnaround efforts from Key Food, such as a total store reset (which left some areas empty as you see below). It seems they increased the nonfood selection as well, probably because those products are less likely to have expiration dates.
Dairy fills the second-to-last aisle, with a small overflow section in the last aisle (which may have previously been seafood, beer, or something like that).
The last aisle also contains freezer cases and Asian foods on the facing grocery aisle. While I can't find an owner's name for this store, there was an Asian manager present at the front end at the time of my visit, so it's likely the owners were Asian.
Frozen foods continue on the front wall, with customer service about halfway across the front end.
Now for a quick look across the front end from the entrance side. Notice the blacked-out Key Food logo over customer service.
And that wraps up our tour of this CTown, which as I mentioned, closed in late 2018. By December 2018, the store had reopened under new ownership as a SuperFresh. Come back tomorrow to take a look inside SuperFresh during its first week in business!
CTown Supermarkets
778 Manor Road, Castleton Corners, Staten Island, NY
Now closed
Photographed February 2018
Comments
Post a Comment