TOUR: Market Fresh Supermarket - Newburgh, NY

Market Fresh Supermarket
Owner: Diego Sanchez

Opened: 2002 as Associated; 2018 as Market Fresh

Cooperative: Allegiance Retail Services
Location: 52 NY-17K, Newburgh, NY

Photographed: November 22, 2023

Welcome to the Market Fresh of Newburgh! It's just a bit east of yesterday's Adams Fairacre Farms, but a very different supermarket. If Adams is a sprawling gourmet market and garden center, Market Fresh is a compact but well-appointed straightforward supermarket. Then again, at 30,500 square feet, it's not exactly small, but the 80,000 square foot Adams complex dwarfs it.

There are three Market Fresh stores affiliated with Allegiance Retail Services (which also runs Foodtown, Pathmark, and Green Way stores), the other two being in Poughkeepsie 16 miles or so north of here, and Middletown, about as far west. All three were previously Associated Supermarkets, then joined Allegiance and switched to Market Fresh in 2018. This one here in Newburgh recently got a light renovation with some new signage, a switch to polished concrete flooring, lots of new fixtures, and a tractor in the middle of the produce department.

Market Fresh is a pretty straightforward mainstream supermarket, though it does lean a bit into Latin and Caribbean foods more than most stores probably would.

Produce is on the left side of the store, with meat and seafood on the back wall. Dairy and frozen are on the right side of the store, with deli and bakery in the front right corner.

It doesn't look like the grocery shelving was replaced in the renovation, but most of the perimeter fixtures were. Here's a look at the produce aisle before. Honestly, both before and after look really good.

The store is spacious and spotless, with shelves stocked high with a lot of stuff. And although they have some specialty and natural/organic items, they mostly leave that to Adams. This store is the closest large supermarket to downtown Newburgh -- although it's not close -- an area that's clearly very low-income and predominantly Black and Hispanic, which together make up almost 3/4 of the city's population. And according to Wikipedia at least, more than half of the city's residents are below the poverty line. This supermarket shares a strip mall with a Target and is on a bus line from the downtown area (notice the bus in one of my exterior pictures), so my guess is most of downtown Newburgh shops here.

But we're a good two miles outside of the center of town, which is a long distance for people who don't drive. Anyway, I think Market Fresh does a really good job of catering to those residents. But we'll see, too, that there are a few small stores in downtown Newburgh that fill the gap.

I don't know if there was previously a service seafood department here, but there's a section for packaged seafood around halfway across the back wall.

I'm also not totally clear on this building's history, although it's been here since at least 1975.

Frozen foods are towards the right side of the store.

Milk cases are in the back right corner, with dairy continuing down the last aisle.

We can see here the new decor involves a lot of fake wood textures.

In the front right corner of the store we have the deli and bakery departments. I would highly recommend the chipotle chicken salad from the deli to anyone. I bought a small package of that and a roll (I needed a quick lunch and didn't feel like waiting on line at the deli for a sandwich, and didn't particularly want any of their premade things)... chicken salad was around $3 and the roll was $0.50. Not bad.

And a look across the front-end, where every register was open with a substantial line, so I think they do alright business here!

And looking back over towards the deli/bakery departments...

That's all for this Market Fresh, but we're headed into downtown Newburgh for a look at two small stores on Monday and Tuesday, with tomorrow's here on The Independent Edition!