Food Bazaar Supermarket
Owner: Spencer An
Opened: August 8, 2024
Previous Tenants: Stop & Shop (2006-February 2024)
Location: 2145 Fairfield Ave, Bridgeport, CT
Photographed: August 18, 2024
Today's four posts so far have focused on Stop & Shop stores that are closing and will become Food Bazaar locations in the future, in
Piscataway,
Carlstadt,
Brooklyn, and
Mount Vernon. Now let's visit a store at a different point in that process. The
Fairfield Avenue Stop & Shop on the West Side of Bridgeport, CT, closed in February 2024 after Food Bazaar's owners bought the building the previous fall. Stop & Shop's lease ended in February and they
closed at that point, citing underperformance. Food Bazaar renovated the space from February until early August, and the store held its soft opening on August 8, later holding an official ribbon cutting and grand opening on August 29. (I will note here: although this is not one of the stores in the
group of 32 closures announced this summer, it did still close in 2024, so it's close enough.)
The 55,000 square foot store has been renovated extensively, although the bones of Stop & Shop are definitely still here. The layout hasn't changed all that much, and you can see the Stop & Shop prior to its closure
here, but there are a few key changes. Many of the fixtures are new, though, and all of the decor certainly is. Let's head in!
The basic setup of the grand aisle is the same, with produce on the right side and the grocery aisles to the right of that. Bakery, deli, and seafood still line the left side wall with meat at the back, but as we'll see, there have been significant changes to those departments. Food Bazaar has walled off the indoor cart storage area just inside the foyer and converted that to a small cafe, with the relocated floral department in front of it...
The bakery is one of the less-changed departments. Part of the Stop & Shop service counter has been replaced with a new display case, and some of the display islands have been changed, but a few remain (such as the muffin display). Of course, all of the decor is new, but the lighting mostly remains.
The brighter cake case to the left is new; the rest of the low refrigerators are leftover, as is some of the bread shelving to the right.
And looking out from the bakery department towards produce, almost everything in that direction is new.
New produce tables take up the middle of the produce department, with new refrigeration lining the outside of the department. The lighting is exceptionally well-done here, keeping the store bright enough but focusing on the colorful products.
The entrance and exit has been reshuffled a bit, too. It was rumored that a big factor in this Stop & Shop's closure was theft, but inexplicably, the exit door was designed to be right in the middle of the produce department -- meaning you could walk out without going anywhere near the registers. Food Bazaar has changed the flow of the store so you can't exit through the grand aisle, and need to walk all the way to the back to enter the main supermarket, more similar to how it's set up at some of their other stores like the new
Myrtle Avenue one. This creates just one stream of traffic in and one out.
Deli is in the same location but with new fixtures, and a new hot food bar and coffee bar. I believe there's a register there for prepared foods, so you could bring them to the cafe.
Between the bakery and deli is this display for rolls and bagels, which if you look very carefully is left over from Stop & Shop and still has the rolls sign at the top.
This is the decor package they introduced for
Flatlands Avenue, although it does change slightly with each new store. You can see how the basics are left over from Stop & Shop, but the appearance is completely different.
Speaking of completely different, check out this seafood department. Stop & Shop didn't have a service seafood counter, but Food Bazaar built out the service counter with packaged fillets on the left and whole fish on ice on the right.
Frozen seafood is in freezer cases facing, essentially behind me in the below picture.
Once again, the meat department is in the same location, but it looks completely different. It's so much nicer and more modern, and the selection in these perimeter departments has clearly been significantly expanded. Packaged meats are in the back of the grand aisle, rather than along the back wall of the store. By the way, in the below picture, notice the rounded ceiling element. You can compare it to the "before" picture
here, just to the left of the Savory & Tender sign.
Meat refrigerators line the outside of this area, with freezers in the middle. The produce department is on the other side of the Sugardale and Black Angus signs, and the grocery aisles are to the left of the Organic Smart Chicken sign.
One feature that Food Bazaar added here that Stop & Shop certainly didn't have -- aged beef, which you can see in the wooden case to the right.
Here you can again see the rounded ceiling part, which helps orient you in looking at the before and after pictures.
As we move into the grocery aisles, the first aisle is, as usual, sales on one side and regular groceries on the other.
Cold cuts and dairy line the rest of the back wall. You can see the international aisles to the right here, something that Stop & Shop didn't really have.
And the skylights remain, which is nice! Food Bazaar interiors tend to use a lot of dark colors, but they also tend to have pretty consistent lighting throughout the store.
Here's a look at part of one of the international aisles. As we see, the lighting, shelving, and flooring is all new. The polished concrete looks great here -- probably because the store isn't that old and the flooring was the same the whole time Stop & Shop was there, so the concrete was never disturbed.
In the grocery aisles, the product mix has been broadened for sure, with large Latin, Caribbean, Asian, and Polish sections.
I'm not totally sure, but I don't think Food Bazaar replaced the freezers here -- they just got a new coat of paint, new category markers, some new wooden trim on top, and some hanging snowflakes above them, because why not?
It does look like they replaced the dairy cases in the back, though. And Food Bazaar definitely drastically changed the product mix -- check out the Korean refrigerated meals next to the Blue Bonnet.
This store has one of the largest selections of nonfoods, general merchandise, and HABA of any Food Bazaar I've seen. There's an entire aisle dedicated to HABA, which is quite a bit more than most Food Bazaars have, and there's actually quite a bit of cosmetics in the front of the store. I don't know of any other Food Bazaars that sell cosmetics.
I do love this lit water shelving, and it always looks so good with the clear bottles!
Stop & Shop's milk cases remain, just outfitted with some new signage and Belgian block trim on the bottom, because again, why not?
And dairy then continues down the last aisle of the store. That must mean that Food Bazaar has quite a bit more dairy than Stop & Shop, right? Because if Stop & Shop had meat, beer, and some dairy on the back wall and then dairy down most of the last aisle, but Food Bazaar moved meat and beer out of the back wall and changed that all over to dairy but kept the dairy all the way down the last aisle... that feels like it must be a bit more.
And here's the beer department, which as you can tell hadn't yet opened at the time of my visit. This is in the front-right corner of the store, where Stop & Shop had floral and a lot of sale stuff.
Food Bazaar still has a lot of mostly-unused space here, although I assume most of this will be beer once that's fully set up.
And the signature ceiling fans and checkout overhang structure are in. There are still offices on the second floor, although you can no longer see up there because of this wooden awning structure.
As you can see here, even though this is just a renovated older store, it looks like a brand-new one. We'll see if the other four stores Food Bazaar is taking on come out as well as this. I'm definitely excited. And one more department before we leave...
Where I believe there was once a bank branch, Food Bazaar has added in this cosmetics department, something I'm not accustomed to seeing in Food Bazaars. (The customer service counter remains where it previously was, just to the right of this.) If you haven't yet, check out the closing Stop & Shop stores, and these four are set to become Food Bazaars too, along with today's regularly-scheduled post in Worcester!
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