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Special Report: Fine Fare Supermarkets - Baychester, Bronx, NY

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By Zachary
Fine Fare Supermarkets
Opened: approx. September 2024
Owner: unknown
Previous Tenants: A&P > Thrift Drugs > Eckerd > Rite Aid > Walgreens
Cooperative: Retail Grocers Group
Location: 3040 Eastchester Rd, Baychester, Bronx, NY
Photographed: December 6, 2024
The trend is strong: for years, drugstores would move into former supermarkets. But now, as more and more drugstores close, the reverse is true. This weekend alone, we're seeing three stores that have opened in former Rite Aids (this one, a Pioneer on Arthur Avenue, and an Antillana at Westchester Square). Like many drugstores, this store of roughly 10,000 square feet was originally a supermarket -- built in the 1960s as an A&P centennial. I don't know if it remained a supermarket after A&P, but it eventually became a Thrift Drugs, later an Eckerd, then a Rite Aid, and finally a Walgreens before closing in 2022.
Fine Fare -- I'm not sure which owner, but the store shares similarities with Rudy Fuertes' locations such as this one -- opened up this fall, after extensively renovating the former drugstore. It looks like the ceiling and lighting are left over from the drugstore, but everything else appears to be new inside.
You enter to a produce department on the left side, with service meat and seafood in the back-left corner of the store. Packaged and frozen meat line the back wall, with the rest of frozen and dairy on the right-side wall of the store. Deli is in the front-right corner, with HABA on the front wall beyond the registers. The other thing this store has in common with certain other Fine Fares, including Fuertes' other locations, is the attention to detail in the produce display. Those two plantains out of place in the above picture are decidedly an outlier in how this store is set up:
Seafood and meat are here at the back of the produce department, with the service seafood counter facing produce and butcher facing the first aisle to the right.
The decor here is pleasant and understated, for the most part. There's a limit to how much you can do because of the lower ceiling.
There aren't that many grocery aisles, but like many other urban stores, the shelves are high to maximize selection.
Looking back towards the first aisle on the back wall...
It looks like all the fixtures here are brand-new, not brought in secondhand. Dairy and frozen in the last aisle...
Deli and some prepared foods are in the front-right corner here.
I believe there are five registers total, too. Small store, but a complete supermarket. That's important because there are very few supermarkets in this neighborhood. There are several on Boston Road to the northwest, but those are over half a mile (difficult if you're on foot). An ALDI occupies part of a former A&P about 2/3 of a mile southeast. In fact, I suspect A&P likely built that store, at 1750 E Gun Hill Rd, as a replacement for this one.
There is a small independent pharmacy about three blocks west, and another Walgreens about half a mile south. But notice this Fine Fare has a larger-than-usual HABA selection stacked high on the front wall, probably to fill some of that need.
After years of seeing closed supermarkets becoming drugstores, I'm so happy to finally be seeing the trend reversed -- at least around here. Don't miss today's other posts, including two other former Rite Aids!
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