TOUR: Liberty Market - Liberty, NY

Liberty Market
Owner: Randy Resnick

Open: 2020-2023

Cooperative: Key Food Stores
Location: 261 N Main St, Liberty, NY

Photographed: February 3, 2021

Welcome to the town of Liberty! Although not a large city, its population of around 10,000 makes it a larger town in the region. We are here to tour the Liberty Market! This 15,000 square foot store appears to have started out as a Victory Market, later Great American, then Ideal Food Basket, then a Key Food-affiliated independent, Liberty Market from 2020 to 2023. Liberty Market closed in early 2023, and by the summer, reopened as Lemonade, a kosher supermarket. Lemonade doesn't appear to have done much to the store, which makes sense because Liberty Market did a fair amount before moving in. See a new outside shot here and inside here.

In an area with a fast-growing Orthodox Jewish population, it seems logical that Liberty can't necessarily support two mainstream stores. There's a ShopRite outside of town as well as a smaller market we'll be seeing. There's also another kosher supermarket just outside downtown, near the ShopRite, called Appletree.

When I visited Liberty Market, it was an attractive but still very clearly old store. Produce is in the first aisle along with the meat department. Dairy was on the back wall, with frozen and beer in the last aisle. The deli was in the front left corner.

In this part of the state, from Rockland County to the northwest, the Orthodox Jewish community has been consistently growing, and kosher supermarkets have moved in while, by and large, mainstream supermarkets have moved out of many towns. In many towns, like Liberty, only one remains -- frequently a bigger-name store, like ShopRite or Stop & Shop.

Liberty Market appears to have replaced most of the fixtures in the store before opening. The decor was also updated, but it looks like possibly the floor was not. There are limited pictures available of the Ideal Food Basket's interior (and none of Great American, as far as I know), but here's one for comparison.

Liberty Market, like Ideal Food Basket before it, sold a larger-than-usual selection of Latin American foods. Liberty's population is around 11% Hispanic. Here we can see Latin cheeses.

Liberty Market may not have replaced the freezers here, but they're not all that old. I don't believe Lemonade replaced any fixtures, except possibly rearranging some things in the produce department.

Looking up towards the back wall of the store...

You can see the case here on the left with deli and baked goods, and the service deli is opposite that on the front wall.

And a look across the front-end...

It's unfortunate that Liberty Market didn't quite make it here, but we'll see another store owned by the same family in a few days. In the meantime, have a good weekend, and we'll come back Monday for a look at an independent grocer just outside of downtown Liberty! Plus, come back both Saturday and Sunday for some special reports for stores in the Bronx and NJ!