Look Inside: Azar Supermarket - Bethlehem, PA

Azar Supermarket

Owner: George Azar

Opened: 2019

Cooperative: none
Location: 3131 Linden St, Bethlehem, PA

Photographed: January 8, 2021

Today's post is relatively brief, but we're going to see this really interesting store which seems to be a hybrid of a farmstand, a Middle Eastern specialty store, and a basic grocer. Oh, and a beautiful garden center. It's a somewhat strange packed into the roughly 16,000 square foot store, but it was a very pleasant shopping experience, and the folks who work here seemed to be quite friendly.

We enter to a large produce department taking up around 1/3 of the store in the front left corner, with butcher/deli in the back left corner, frozen/dairy around the outside, and a few grocery aisles with basic groceries and imported Middle Eastern items. It's an eclectic mix of items with exceptionally good produce, so it works.

I bought kale here for extremely cheap that was some of the healthiest I've ever seen. Check out those giant piles of leafy greens along the wall here.

A look at the butcher/deli service counter in the back. The selection in the grocery aisles leans international, but basics are here too. There's also fresh bread and other items like pitas...

It's a fun place. Until around 2017 this was the Elias Farm Market, which seems to have been more of the straight farmstand style store. There's another Elias Market in Allentown.

I would love to know what the inside of the original Elias Farm Market looked like here, but this is a really interesting evolution of the space, and one that seems to be very successful.

Well folks, that wraps up Bethlehem, and up next we're headed to the final city of the Lehigh Valley, Easton, which is right on the Delaware River (and therefore the New Jersey border). We're right back here on The Independent Edition tomorrow for a look inside a small grocer in the Palmer Heights neighborhood of Easton!