TOUR: Old World Food Market - Nyack, NY

Old World Food Market

Owner: Andrew Poma Jr.

Opened: 2009

Cooperative: none
Location: 40 NY-59, Nyack, NY

Photographed: March 8, 2023

Welcome to the Old World Food Market of Nyack! This spectacular store is actually just 15,000 square feet, although it feels much larger -- and built around a 9,000 square foot or so barrel-roof building. I'm not positive what the building was originally, as it has some characteristics that resemble an A&P, but there was also definitely an A&P across the street -- and both were built between 1953 and 1964. Old World Food Market opened up here in 2009 after a gorgeous renovation to turn the space into a roomy gourmet supermarket.

We enter in the front right corner of the store to bakery and prepared foods on the right side of the store. Massive hot and cold food bars line the left side of that aisle. Meat and seafood counters are at the back of the first aisle, with dairy and frozen in the rest of the back part of the store. Cheese and deli are in an island, forming the centerpiece of the store, with grocery and produce on the left side wall.

As we can see, the store is truly impressive in both its design and its offerings. Every department was exceptional. Of course, it's not exactly a bargain grocery experience, but it's not trying to be either.

The bakery department looks much like a high-end bakery rather than a supermarket bakery department. The breads are amazing, too.

And you can clearly see here how each display and fixture is carefully chosen and designed to create the "old world" feel.

At the back of the first aisle we have the seafood and butcher counters. Great decor here too, with the boat! And the exposed wood ceiling couldn't look better in this store.

Packaged meats and cold cuts are at the back of the store, along with dairy and beverages in a few short aisles.

The store's frozen section is very small, but clearly that's not the focus here. The focus is on the perishables, which I'd estimate take up 2/3 of the sales floor.

The large selection of single-serve cold beverages makes me think this is likely a popular stop for a to-go meal. And why wouldn't it be? We saw the huge prepared foods bars!

And in the front of the center store is the enormous cheese counter, which seems to go on forever. Again, the selection and quality is unbelievable, but you will spend a lot of money here.

Candy and a few other items are next to the cheese department, and we can see the grocery aisles under the chandeliers to the left. They are short and not in the main barrel-roof section.

I was surprised to find that, despite the smaller size of the store and the gourmet focus, there was a pretty substantial selection of HABA and cleaning products, mostly angled towards natural brands like Seventh Generation. Below we're looking towards the back of the store on the far left side.

The grocery section is mostly made up of small shelving islands rather than typical aisles, which is likely done to keep the gourmet specialty store feeling.

And at the back of the grocery aisles is the frozen/dairy section, seen here with a few islands at the back of the store. The beverage aisle is to the right in the below picture.

Now heading back towards the front of the store, we see the deli counter which faces the front-end and the prepared foods bars back in the first aisle. But there's still one department we haven't seen yet!

The produce department felt a little bit tucked away in the front corner of the store, taking up part of the front-end and then continuing into a walk-in refrigerator room in the front left corner.

Even the refrigerator room has a chandelier in it! And we can see here that, since the whole room is refrigerated, the greens and other items are out on shelves rather than in cases.

And now back out to the main sales floor to look across the front-end...

As we can see, the Old World Food Market is an exceptional store. This is what a lot of gourmet markets aspire to being, but not many do. (That said, we've seen some other exceptional gourmet markets and we will continue to see more.) Don't forget to check out the A&P across the street here, and tomorrow, we're headed into downtown Nyack here on The Independent Edition!