Grocery chain Food Bazaar will replace Red Hook’s Fairway Market after a judge approved the deal this week, according to the struggling supermarket’s landlord.
“We are happy to officially report that Food Bazaar will be our tenant at the Red Hook Stores Building,” said the O’Connell Organization in a post to a local Facebook group on July 30.
Bogopa Services Corp, owners of the Food Bazaar chain, successfully bid for Fairway’s Red Hook and Douglaston, Queens locations this week, reported the trade publication Supermarket Perimeter. The successful bid ends Fairway’s 14-year reign in the waterfront neighborhood after moving into the 19th-century Van Brunt Street warehouse in 2006.
The total $2.43 million deal is mostly for equipment and inventory of the two grocery stores, according to court filings. That includes the acquisition of $875,000-worth of inventory, along with $5,000 in furniture, fixtures, and equipment from the Red Hook Fairway.
The sale agreement also requires the buyer to hire at least 90 percent of employees, the fillings show.
Food Bazaar will likely phase in their move to the nabe before having a grand opening, according to Gregory O’Connell, a managing partner with the O’Connell Organization.
The real estate bigwig said that the grocer will offer a wide variety of fresh products at a more affordable price than Fairway or other stores around the city, along with international goods that are hard to come by elsewhere.
“Red Hook residents can expect the freshest and most comprehensive variety of produce and fish of any supermarket in NYC at affordable prices compared to Whole Foods or Fairway,” O’Connell said in a statement. “Many residents I have spoken to travel to other Food Bazaars to do their grocery shopping because of their quality, affordability, consistency, and cleanliness. Additionally, Food Bazaar offers a wide selection of international items, not easily found in other markets of their size.”
Bogopa — which operates 26 Food Bazaar stores in the Tri-State area, including six outposts in Brooklyn — put in a bid for the two locations during a bankruptcy auction earlier this month.
The firm edged out a counter-offer by Seven Seas, an operator and member of the Key Food Stores Cooperative, which bought Fairway’s other Kings County outpost at the Georgetown strip mall on Ralph Avenue for $5 million in March.
Fairway filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in January to address its towering $174 million debts.
A spokeswoman for Fairway declined to provide comment.
Bogopa did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
