Freshtown Marketplace
Opened: February 21, 2025
Welcome to the latest store from Allegiance Retail! The cooperative, which primarily runs Foodtown stores, has been on a bit of an expansion kick lately, and this new store in the Hudson Valley city of Newburgh is the most recent example. Newburgh actually already has a store affiliated with Allegiance, the Market Fresh on route 17K, which is under different ownership.
This Freshtown is owned by PSK Supermarkets, a company started in the Bronx by Paul Sydney Katz (hence PSK) and later expanding outside the city. Today, it's employee-owned but still run by a member of the Katz family. The roughly 25,000 square foot store isn't huge, but it's a good size and has extensive selections despite being much smaller than the 72,000 square foot Market 32 practically next door. It's clear Freshtown is going for a more straightforward approach than the upscale Market 32, but still has plenty of higher-end selections. Other than Market 32, this store competes with a Stop & Shop about two miles west along with a variety of other stores across the city.
The store was most recently a Big Lots, which moved not long ago to a space in the Market 32 plaza. An Ocean State Job Lot is just down the street to the west, occupying a former ShopRite that closed in 2021. So Freshtown had to start from scratch turning the space into a supermarket, including building out prep space and all new fixtures. The grand aisle is on the right side of the store, with produce and packaged meats on the right side and two islands on the left side. The front island has a service bakery counter (as you can see, they do bake in-store here), along with a deli and prepared foods department behind it. There's a pizza counter at the back of the island, too, facing the middle aisle that divides the store's grocery aisles. In the rear island, sushi and service seafood face upright refrigerators of packaged meat and seafood. There's a butcher counter in the back-right corner with dairy on the back wall and frozen on the left side of the store. No pharmacy, but a more complete HABA selection than we typically see in independents like this.
Nice bagels! (I got a few, we'll see how they taste...if they're chewy enough.) The produce department faces the service deli and bakery departments.
The store is attractive but not particularly upscale, which I think is intentional. There are already two higher-end shopping choices in Newburgh, Market 32 and Adams Fairacre Farms. My guess is that they're hoping this store is more a replacement for the closed ShopRite or an alternative to Stop & Shop than an alternative to Market 32 or Adams.
PSK now owns around 20 stores, including the Peck's Market stores which they recently acquired. They own the single operating Pathmark, in Brooklyn, and three other Freshtown stores in the Hudson Valley area. This is the only Freshtown I've been to.
Here's a look at the center dividing aisle with the sushi and seafood island behind it.
Packaged meats in the back-right corner of the store.
There's a service seafood case facing the back wall with fish on ice, in front of where the clerk in the baseball cap is standing. Self-service seafood faces the right-side wall.
The barn-style decor is fun, and the store looks fantastic because of the grand opening, I'm sure. Still, I've been to other PSK stores that are really first-rate, so it'll likely stay in this condition.
Dairy lines the back wall of the store.
Some frozen meat items line the back half of the first aisle (deli/bakery are in the island you can see straight ahead).
Here's a look across the middle aisle of the store. Notice that there are only four aisles in the front half, and I believe the back half has two more aisles than the front half. It's not a large store, and the focus is on the perimeter departments. But there's still a little of everything.
Beer and soda are in the front half of the first aisle.
The store, as you can probably tell in the pictures, feels simultaneously modern and old-school, and to me it felt like both a brand-new store and a familiar store that's always been there. It's a very pleasant feeling, at least to me.
I was here about a week after the grand opening, which was on February 21, so it wasn't day one but it was still very early.
Dairy and frozen line the last aisle, with dairy in the back half and frozen in the front half.
It's still early, but so far the response from customers to this store seems to be largely positive. It was rather busy when I visited (even though the pictures don't necessarily look that way), which was a Wednesday afternoon -- not exactly peak shopping time.
Customer service is in the front-left corner. As you can see, it's remarkable what they've managed to fit into such a relatively small store.
Opened: February 21, 2025
Owner: PSK Supermarkets
Previous Tenants: Big Lots
Cooperative: Allegiance Retail
Location: 59 N Plank Rd, Newburgh, NY
Photographed: February 26, 2025
I'm glad to see another new supermarket in this area since it lost the ShopRite not long ago. We'll see how the neighborhood responds to Freshtown, but in the meantime, don't miss this weekend's other posts!
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