By Connor Adams Sheets
The effort to ensure that the new Asian owners of the Roosevelt Avenue Key Food supermarket in Flushing cater to the tastes of American customers intensified last week at a meeting of the Queensboro Hill Civic Association.
The store, which was one of the last full-service American food markets in downtown Flushing until it closed in May, is currently being renovated and will reopen as early as the end of the fall as the fifth store in the New York Mart chain of Asian markets.
The change from a typical American-style grocery to a predominantly Asian market has many longtime area residents worried that they will not be able to get the foods they are used to purchasing.
Ann Tuyen, manager of New York Mart, has been working with community leaders and elected officials to ensure that those concerns are addressed.
She attended the packed Aug. 25 Queensboro Hill meeting in order to introduce herself to the community and let them know that they should submit lists of items they want the store to carry to the civic’s president, Don Capalbi.
“I would like to help everybody out to have everything they ask for,” she told attendees. “But you need to let me know what you want me to have.”
She did not talk extensively because she is not confident speaking in English, but she said she wanted to show that she hopes to work with the community and that she has been looking into how to accommodate their needs.
She has looked into carrying Entenmann’s brand baked goods, one of the key items residents have said they want to see when the new store opens, but said she could not find a local supplier. Capalbi said he would help her get in touch with a distributor.
Capalbi implored residents to be understanding that the store is under new ownership and be patient.
“These are people that come here from a different culture. They don’t know our foods, they don’t know what we want,” he said as he stood next to Tuyen. “What we’re trying to do is make a bridge or expand on a bridge between our communities and I think we’re making some progress.”
New York Mart is currently selling fruits and vegetables on outdoor displays at the old Key Food location, but will not open in full until the construction work is complete.
The store will be 18,000 square feet, up from 10,000 square feet, according to James McClelland, a spokesman for City Councilman Peter Koo (R-Flushing), since New York Mart plans to finish the basement in order to use it as storage space. The work will not change the footprint, but the sales floor will be markedly larger than it was at Key Food. Koo set up an initial meeting about the new store.
Capalbi added that economics will be one of the defining factors in the end and told the meeting’s attendees to keep that in mind when they make choices about where to shop if their items end up being available in the New York Mart store.
“If you request items at the store, make sure you actually go there and buy those products,” he said. “If the stuff’s sitting on the shelves and it’s not selling, what would you do? Shelf space is everything in this business.”
Reach reporter Connor Adams Sheets by e-mail at csheets@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4538.
