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Special Report: Ogden Market Center - Bronx, NY

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By Zachary
Ogden Market Center
Opened: March 2025
Owner: unknown
Previous Tenants: Rite Aid
Cooperative: America's Food Basket
Location: 1091 Ogden Ave, Bronx, NY
Photographed: April 7, 2025
As Rite Aid (and other drugstore chains) shrink, there's no doubt that there's a strong trend of supermarkets moving into those spaces. I mean, today alone I've posted three stores that used to be Rite Aids -- this one, a City Fresh Market in Ridgewood, Queens, and a Pioneer in Belmont. These spots make for perfect supermarkets, not least because some of them actually were originally supermarkets. I don't know if that was the case here at the Ogden Market Center, a roughly 10,000 square foot, brand new supermarket.
The former Rite Aid has been painted a very, um, attention-grabbing color scheme on the outside, which is kind of funny because the inside is all beige. The store opened in mid-March, so it's still quite new. Let's check it out!
You enter on the right side of the supermarket to the produce department, with an area for produce prep right in the middle of the sales floor (you can see it to the left above). I don't know if that was an intentional choice or simply because there was nowhere else to put it, but it's definitely unusual. A counter with coffee, juice, and tacos -- and even house-made tortillas -- is at the back of the produce department, with dairy lining the rest of the back wall. Frozen foods and meat are on the left side of the store in the last aisle, with a service butcher counter about halfway back on the last aisle.
There's also space at the front of the store carved out for two outside businesses. One is a barber shop, and the other is a (yet-to-open) fast-food counter.
Beer and other beverages are here in the refrigerator facing the produce prep area, which isn't a service counter but has bins of produce all around it.
Although it's a small store, it looks like they're trying to have a little bit of everything here. In produce, you've got fresh sofrito and Upton's Naturals Jackfruit practically right next to each other. I assume over time the store will modify its product selection to reflect what people are actually buying, but for now, it looks like they're trying everything. Highbridge is a predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood, but is gentrifying, meaning that all of those selections might just come in handy.
It looks like all of the fixtures were new here. The grocery aisles have the feeling of a much larger store because of the type of shelving and setup.
Ogden Market Center is an independent grocer, but is a member of America's Food Basket. The Fine Fare diagonally across the street from this store recently switched to Ideal Food Basket (another brand of America's Food Basket), making me wonder if the two stores share an owner. Both businesses respond to Google reviews, and both have referenced talking to manangers Brian or Jordan, so it's most likely the stores are under the same ownership. In that case, the two stores can be thought of as supplemental rather than competitive. Ideal might have a deli and seafood counter, but Ogden Market has a coffee bar and taco shop. Ideal has the basics, Ogden Market has the specialized items.
The meat department begins on the back wall and then continues down the last aisle.
I don't know what Rite Aid's layout was, and I haven't seen any interior photos, but I'm confident in saying there's nothing inside this supermarket left over from the Rite Aid days.
The Ideal Food Basket across the street doesn't have a service butcher counter, but it does have both a service seafood counter and a deli, neither of which this store has. The offices and bathrooms are in the front corner beyond the meat counter in the below picture.
More frozen foods on the front wall between the last aisle and the front-end.
This area between the produce prep area, which for some reason has a wall behind it here, and the registers is awkward, and I wouldn't be surprised if eventually there's something else added here. But why wouldn't you put a deli counter here? It feels like a waste of space in a store that's already small.
And a look at the front-end.
I'm loving the trend of drugstores becoming supermarkets instead of the other way around because, well, I love supermarkets, but it gives a great opportunity for new and different stores like this one. Before we leave Highbridge, though, here's a shot of the new Ideal Food Basket diagonally across the street, previously the Fine Fare which you can tour here.
The interior basically hasn't changed since the switch from Fine Fare to Ideal Food Basket, and you can see the department names across the front of the awning are even still in the Fine Fare font, so I assume the store hasn't changed ownership. And as I mentioned, my best guess is that both stores are under the same ownership. Make sure to check out this weekend's other posts here!
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