An employee stocks fruit at Angel’s Fruit Market, a small grocery store in the heart of Bushwick that offers some of the best produce in the neighborhood at unbeatable prices. – Photo by Diego Cupolo

It’s been a year since we conducted our first Supermarket Sweep, and while Bushwick’s disgruntled foodies continue shopping at Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods in Manhattan, local grocery prices have fluctuated wildly during the last 12 months – most likely due to our economic "situation." 

Milk’s down, eggs went up, and bread is steady. With so much chaos in the Mercantile Exchange, the time is ripe for a reassessment of our neighborhood’s supermarkets to see how they stack up against the competition in Union Square. After all, a little bit of research is worth saving a trip on the subway and, most importantly, cash money. 

The Method – Between Monday, Oct. 5 and Friday, Oct 9, I visited 24 local grocery stores and 2 Manhattan stores to record the price of five staple foods: a gallon of milk, a bag of sliced bread, a dozen eggs, bananas, and a 15.5-ounce can of black beans (the standard Goya brand size). All prices were taken from the cheapest item available in each category. 

This time, I expanded the search to East Williamsburg for the sake of comparison and combed the neighborhood more thoroughly to include smaller stores like Angel’s Fruit Market, Bravo Supermarket, and the new Peach Farm on Knickerbocker Avenue (places that did not sell all five staple foods were not included in the survey). Each store was ranked on a scale of 1 to 26, 1 being the cheapest and 26 being the most expensive.  

The Results – Overall, price data showed a sort of "widening" effect in price: the cheap got cheaper and the costly got … err, costlier? Out of the 19 stores that were surveyed last year, 13 dropped their prices while 6 (mostly higher end stores) upped their prices.

Once again, the most economical place to shop in Greater Bushwick is Junior’s Food Outlets at the corner of Wyckoff Ave. and Summerfield St., with a total staple food cost of $5.79. Though their products may not yield the highest concentration of nutrients, where else are you going to find ultra-refined bread for just 79 cents a bag? The only place that came close was runner-up Compare Foods over on Grand Street, with a total of $6.93.  

Notably, the C-Town by the Chauncey St. JZ station came in third place after slashing its prices more than anyone else in the neighborhood. Last year, the store’s total was $9.05, this year it’s $6.95. What happened and why haven’t the other C-Towns experienced the same price drop? The mystery remains … but hopefully not in the meat. 

The middle ground consists mainly of Bogopa’s sister chains Food Bazaar and Food Dimensions, and the generally awful Associated Supermarkets. Though Associated usually carries better produce than Bogopa stores, everything else is a huge rip off. I live near the Associated on Broadway and I hate the place so much I bike to Food Dimensions just to save a dollar on oatmeal. In addition, Food Bazaar and Food Dimensions carry bread from Grimaldi’s Bakery, making them the only places to get a decent loaf in the neighborhood.  

A note on Key Food: this chain somehow encompasses the two extremes of the supermarket experience, both a bit overpriced. On one hand, there’s the Broadway location by the Halsey JZ stop which is by far the sketchiest grocery store in this survey. Not so much because of the food, but because every time I’m there some nut job is yelling endless nonsense in the middle of store, and not the kind of nonsense you can simply ignore, but the kind that makes you think, "What’s he going to do next?"  

Then, on the other hand, there’s the Grand Street location, which is a bit out of the way for most readers, but completely worth the trip because their overall food quality, selection, and presentation beats anything else in the area. It’s basically the big supermarket you wish you could find in Bushwick. 

But enough gibberish, lets drop the guillotine: the most expensive grocery store in the neighborhood is the Bogart Street darling, Brooklyn’s Natural, with a total price of $15.05 (up 54 cents from last year). Khim’s Millennium Market follows with a total of $14.45. What’s shocking is these prices are calculated with only a half gallon of milk since these stores do not carry full gallons. Sure, they’re the only organic/health food stores around here, but the produce is severely overpriced and not always so great.  

When compared to the Trader Joe’s total of $8.45 and Whole Foods total of $11.15, our organic stores look even more outrageous. The only reason they’re still in business is because they’re open 24 hours in areas that have nothing else to offer. As far as local round-the-clock convenience, nobody beats Mr. Kiwi’s at Myrtle and Broadway – at a total of $9.46 for staple foods, this semi-organic produce store is much less damaging to the wallet and the poor man’s ego.  

Finally, if you still feel the need to import your groceries from Manhattan, consider the neighborhood staple for more than 30 years, Angel’s Fruit Market. It looks small from the outside, but the shelves are stacked to the ceiling with some of the most affordable and highest quality produce in the neighborhood. With a price total of $7.20, the store is the cheapest on Knickerbocker Avenue, not to mention they also carry all kinds of Italian products and assorted cheeses. 

The owner, Carmelo Bruno, can usually be found behind the register and makes for great conversation about Bushwick – past and present. During my last visit I asked him how he keeps his prices so low and with great pride, he pointed his right thumb straight into his chest. 

"It’s because I pick all the food myself," he said and then continued bagging a few peaches. "I been in this business a long time. I know all the right people and I got all the right connections."

see larger map — see list of supermarkets