Food Bazaar Supermarket
Owner: Spencer An
It's time for another Food Bazaar renovation! I believe 11 of the 31 Food Bazaar stores have been renovated in some way or opened new in the last six months, if I counted right, and most of the rest were either renovated or opened in the last 5 years. The Myrtle Avenue store was demolished for a new multi-story development with a brand-new Food Bazaar on the ground floor, expected to open next year. Plans are moving forward to do the same with the original Food Bazaar, too. The chain is extremely active and seems to be doing very well. But I wasn't aware that a major renovation was going on at the larger and older Bridgeport location until I stopped by while traveling between my two homes of Massachusetts and New Jersey.
First of all, they took my advice in my 2017 post! (Okay, maybe they didn't exactly take my advice, but they did switch the flooring to polished concrete.) The layout is being modified, too. I believe a grocery aisle or two was taken out to accommodate a larger grand aisle. There is now a refrigerator case lining the front of the produce department (see to the left above), separating it from the front-end. This makes the produce department more of an enclosed department rather than open to the rest of the store. As we can see, there's still plenty of space around it.
The bakery remains in the front right corner of the store, and it remains packed with way more baked goods than most Food Bazaars' bakeries. One of the reasons the produce department had to be rearranged was because of the addition of a new department between produce and bakery...
...a brand-new service cheese department, something that Food Bazaar learned from their acquisitions of the Fairway stores. These service cheese departments, which cut blocks of cheese to order and make some cheeses like mozzarella in-store, have been added to quite a few higher-end Food Bazaars.
The deli has been moved up to the front of the right side wall, from the back corner. This whole area is newly-built, and as we see, still under construction.
Clearly, this renovation is a pretty major undertaking because it involves so much layout change and it looks like all the fixtures around the store are being replaced.
And the already-massive produce department feels even bigger now.
It seems that the seafood department is being moved from the back wall to the side wall, to the right above here. Although I could see into the closed-off area, work was ongoing so I couldn't take a picture. They were installing the non-slip floor tiles Food Bazaar typically has in its seafood departments. A row of brand-new seafood freezers faces on the left side of the picture above.
And here's the existing seafood department in the back corner. Notice the non-slip floor tiling. I wouldn't be surprised if Food Bazaar were to move the butcher counter to this corner and turn the existing butcher counter into packaged meat shelving.
Opposite the enormous butcher is the new packaged meat area, which used to be in the first or second grocery aisle I believe. Notice the all brand-new fixtures, and the column with the new wood facing (left) and the old painted column (right).
On the back wall, the cold cuts and dairy cases have all been replaced too, and they look amazing. The, uh, intense decor here has been toned down and I assume there will be more going up on the walls shortly. The department signage has already been installed, but older promotional signage remains around the store, as do the older aisle markers.
The main display has been cut down to half of one aisle, again to expand the grand aisle I believe.
Grocery shelving has also been replaced throughout the store.
The product mix has been diversified, too. There were a lot more organic/natural selections, plus a much larger selection of Italian and eastern Asian foods -- both demographics very present in this area, which other supermarkets around here don't cater to particularly well.
Brand-new freezer cases. See before.
The back wall of the store is packaged meats, cold cuts, and dairy, with dairy continuing down the last aisle now.
And as we get into the last few grocery aisles, we have dairy around the outside, with beer facing in the back and in the front, a new Asian food department including refrigerated noodles and other products.
As we can see, the decor seems to have been toned down a bit for this store (I assume for cost reasons), although just how extensive the renovation will be decor-wise remains to be seen. Compare this store to Flatlands, which has the same decor package. Obviously, I want this store to look like that one, but I have to assume that full decor package is crazy expensive, not to mention difficult to implement when the store hasn't closed. Already, work was clearly ongoing (even a few days before Thanksgiving when I visited), and a few rows of parking in the parking lot were closed off and used as construction storage.
The new Asian food department, complete with its own refrigerator section, in the third-to-last aisle.
Dairy has been extended into the former soda area in the last aisle, and soda has been moved onto the front wall. Shaw's would've had a pharmacy in the front corner here, and while Food Bazaar initially just covered it up with nonfoods shelving, they have since repurposed the alcove into soda shelving...
And the front-end has been remodeled with the new hanging lanterns, which I love, and a few other upgrades.
Owner: Spencer An
Opened: 2010
Previous Tenants: Shaw's (1997-ca. 2005)
Cooperative: none
Location: 500 Sylvan Ave, Bridgeport, CT
Photographed: November 22, 2022
Glad to see this store looking really good (not to mention rather popular) several years after I first visited. Here's a look at our other coverage for today!
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