The weekly sale isle in Food Bazaar, at Broadway and Manhattan, the runner-up for least expensive local grocery store. — photo by Diego Cupolo

Read the 2009 Sweep Update

It’s easy to spot Bushwick’s unsatisfied food connoisseurs: they ride the subway with one hand on the pole and the other holding a brown paper bag full of groceries from Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods.

While it seems like Bushwick has an infinite number of bodegas, corner stores and dingy places full of expired food, it is also home to a good amount of respectable grocery stores that could spare residents the journey to Union Square for all but the most specialty items. At least 17 major supermarkets can be found inside the neighborhood’s borders or within reasonable walking distance –- not bad considering New York City, as a whole, has lost one-third of its supermarkets since 2002.

For the sake of comparison, BushwickBK.com conducted a simple price survey on the local supermarkets to see how they stacked up against 14th Street’s Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods. Between Tuesday, Oct. 7 and Friday, Oct. 10, I visited every store and recorded the price of five staple foods: a gallon of milk, the cheapest sliced bread, a dozen eggs, bananas and a 15.5-ounce can of black beans (standard Goya size).

I noticed interesting patterns like price fluctuations between stores under the same chain-name. I also found significantly fewer supermarkets south of Myrtle Avenue, which resulted in higher prices for the same products in those areas.

The store with the lowest prices was Junior’s Food Outlets, on the corner of Wyckoff Avenue and Summerfield Street by the Halsey L stop. The five staple foods at Junior’s came to the remarkably low total of $6.86 –- love those wholesale prices! The runner-up for cheapest supermarket was the Food Bazaar on Broadway and Manhattan Avenue, with a total bill of $8.25.

The Bogopa Service Corp. owns Food Bazaar and its sister store, Food Dimensions, both of which turned out to be the thriftiest chain grocery stores, with four locations in Bushwick. Though they sell the same food, the Food Bazaar and Food Dimensions near the Myrtle/Wyckoff L stop have nicer aesthetics than the two Bogopa enterprises on Broadway.

Speaking from personal experience in my northwest corner of the neighborhood, the Food Dimensions at the Broadway/Myrtle JMZ stop has the cheapest beer, and the Food Bazaar on Manhattan Avenue has the best tortilla selection (though they sometimes absorb the poignant stench of the store’s fish market).

The most expensive grocery store in Bushwick is (unsurprisingly) Brooklyn’s Natural by the Morgan L stop, with the total bill coming to $14.51 -– and they don’t even sell milk by the gallon, this is the total bill with a half-gallon of milk. The runner-up for most expensive store is Khim’s Millennium Market by the Montrose L stop, with a total tally of $14.25.

Yes, the above two stores sell organic food and it’s unfair to compare them to regular supermarkets, but black beans go for two dollars in both stores, versus 80-90 cents at most of the other stores — including the Manhattan controls. Not to mention the outrageous $4.49 bag of sliced bread at Brooklyn’s Natural — that can get you a lot of morcilla at La Isla cuchifrito.

To put everything in perspective, the total bill for the five items at Trader Joe’s was $9.05 and came to $12.25 at Whole Foods.

Ultimately, despite bellyaching to the contrary, Bushwick supermarkets are plentiful and the neighborhood’s fresh fruit and vegetable offerings have gotten better in recent months -– three produce stores opened near Myrtle and Broadway in the last year. It’s hard to tell what’s in store for Bushwick’s gastronomic future, but in the meantime, we hope this simple research project will help link residents with the supermarkets that best fit their needs.


see larger map — see list of supermarkets

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