Fairway Market Explained
Fairway Market is a small American grocery chain founded in 1933 by Nathan Glickberg.[1] [2] It is one of the brands owned by the Wakefern Food Corporation, whose flagship supermarket cooperative network is ShopRite.[3]
The prime location at Broadway and West 74th Street, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, is one of four surviving stores as of 2020[4] that are operated by Wakefern cooperative member, Village Super Markets.[5]
Sale to private equity
Fairway Market is a specialty market with four locations in Manhattan.
Sterling Investment Partners, a private equity firm in Westport, Connecticut, bought a controlling stake in Fairway Market in January 2007 and expanded the chain in the Greater New York area. Sterling made a $150 million capital investment in Fairway leading to enterprise growth.[6]
In 2011, the chain had revenues of $550 million.[6] It was spun off in an IPO on April 17, 2013, trading under its parent, Fairway Group Holdings Corp., on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol "FWM".[7]
History
The original Fairway Market at West 74th Street on Manhattan's Upper West Side was originally a produce shop. By 1997, it had expanded with a café that became a steakhouse at night.
In 2011, Fairway opened two more locations: one on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, which opened on July 20, and the other in the Douglaston neighborhood of Queens, which opened on November 16. In 2012, Fairway Market opened three more locations: in Woodland Park, New Jersey, on June 6; Westbury, New York, on August 22; and Kips Bay in Manhattan in late December. In 2013, Fairway Market opened a location in Chelsea, Manhattan, and another at The Shops at Nanuet shopping mall in Nanuet, New York.
As of 2020, all but five of these Fairway stores have either closed or sold to other retailers, including Amazon.[5] The sequence of all stores is as follows:
- 1930s: The flagship store still occupies the original Broadway location in the Upper West Side.
- 1995: Fairway's Harlem store opened in a significantly larger space. This store had a 10000square feet enclosed space, known as the "Cold Room," which contained the store's meats, seafood, dairy products, and beer. Silver coats hung nearby for customers who wished to keep warm while browsing the freezer. Without a bidder after the company's second bankruptcy, the store closed in July 2020.[8]
- 2001: The company opened its first store outside the city in the Long Island community of Plainview.
- 2006: The company opened its fourth store in Red Hook, Brooklyn. In July 2020 this store was sold to Bogopa Service Corporation to be reopened as a Food Bazaar supermarket.[9]
- 2009: On March 25, Fairway's fifth store opened in the Fashion Center shopping mall in suburban Paramus, New Jersey, taking up a majority of the mall's former interior space. This was the first Fairway store located west of the Hudson River and the first location ever to open in the entire state of New Jersey. In March 2020, it was announced that the Paramus location would close.[10] The official closing date for the Paramus location was supposed to be May 15, 2020, but it was delayed to the summer of 2020 due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was then replaced by an Amazon Fresh store.[11]
- 2010: On April 14, Fairway opened a new branch in a former Kmart in the Westchester County village of Pelham Manor, directly across the border with the Bronx. This became Fairway's third location in the New York City suburbs and sixth overall.[12] Fairway opened its first Wine and Spirit store adjacent to the market. The second wine and spirit superstore was opened adjacent to the Stamford market.
- 2010: In November, Fairway's seventh and largest location to date at over opened in Stamford, Connecticut.[13]
- 2011: Fairway opened a location on the Upper East Side of Manhattan on 86th Street, between Second and Third Avenues.
- Fairway also opened a location in Douglaston, Queens in 2011. In July 2020 this store was sold to Bogopa Service Corporation to be reopened as a Food Bazaar supermarket.
- 2012: In June, Fairway opened its tenth food store and third Wine and Spirits Store in Woodland Park, New Jersey, in a renovated former Pathmark Super Center store. The company closed this location on April 1, 2020, with the location being replaced by an Amazon Go market
- 2012: In August, Fairway Market opened a 68000square feet store in the Roosevelt Raceway Center in Westbury in August 2012.
- 2012: In December, Fairway opened their Kips Bay, Manhattan location on East 30th Street and Second Avenue.
- 2013: In July, Fairway Market opened their 13th store in Chelsea, Manhattan at Sixth Avenue on July 24, 2013.
- 2013: In October, Fairway opened their 14th store in Nanuet, New York, at The Shops at Nanuet mall on October 10, 2013. The store closed on September 25, 2019. It was then replaced by a Stop & Shop. [14]
- 2014: Fairway Market opened a store in the DSW Plaza in Lake Grove, New York, on July 23, 2014. This store was the first Fairway Market location in Suffolk County on Long Island and the 15th food store in the metropolitan area. The company closed the store after only two years.
- 2017: In January, Fairway opened a store in a Georgetown (Brooklyn) strip mall. In March 2020, the store was sold to Key Food for $5 million.[15]
In 2023, Fairway partnered with Instacart; launching a delivery service called Fairway Now that services 3 stores in the Manhattan area.[16]
In 2024, Village Supermarkets which acquired Fairway Market in 2020, opened a new store in Old Bridge, N.J. that features departments borrowed from Fairway Market's banners in New York City.[17]
External links
40.7806°N -73.9817°W
Notes and References
- https://www.fairwaymarket.com/about-fairway/ Fairway Market History
- News: Creswell . Julie . October 29, 2015 . Fairway Slumps as Epicure Options Grow . The New York Times . March 15, 2023.
- Web site: Redman . Russell . 2022-02-09 . Wakefern makes flurry of management moves . 2022-06-08 . Supermarket News . en.
- Web site: Store Locator . August 27, 2018 . August 28, 2018 . https://web.archive.org/web/20180828035741/https://www.fairwaymarket.com/store-locator/ . dead .
- News: Redman . Russell . 2020-03-25 . Fairway Market to sell two N.J. store leases to Amazon . Supermarket News . 3 January 2021.
- News: Fairway Grocery Chain Targets an Expansion . The Wall Street Journal . Sumathi . Reddy . 11 July 2011.
- News: Fwm. CNN .
- Web site: Fairway Set to Start Closing 125th Street Location As Soon As Today. 2020-10-22. www.westsiderag.com. June 26, 2020 .
- Web site: Bogopa Service Corporation Acquires Two Fairway Market Locations. www.businesswire.com. Business Wire. February 27, 2022. July 22, 2020.
- Web site: March 26, 2020 . Amazon Acquiring Fairway Market Lease in Paramus . BoozyBurbs.com . March 26, 2020.
- Web site: Levine . Cecilia . May 6, 2020 . Fairway Market In Paramus To Close . DailyVoice.com . May 7, 2020.
- News: May 12, 2008 . Fairway Market Said to Expand to N.Y.'s Westchester County . Progressive Grocer . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20090413230800/http://www.progressivegrocer.com/progressivegrocer/content_display/supermarket-industry-news/e3ie08e6244501937513003fe0f36feeb99?imw=Y . April 13, 2009.
- News: Peter . Healy . Antares loses control of Stamford office complex . Greenwich Time . 20 April 2009 . 24 April 2009 . https://web.archive.org/web/20090424050731/https://www.greenwichtime.com/ci_12185986 . 24 April 2009 .
- News: Taliaferro . Lanning . September 24, 2019 . Fairway Market Closing In Nanuet . Nanuet, NY Patch . September 25, 2019.
- News: Duggan . Kevin . Fairway Sells Georgetown Outpost to Key Food in Bankruptcy Auction . Brooklyn Paper . March 27, 2020.
- Web site: Fairway Market launches 30-minute delivery through Instacart . 2024-08-06 . Grocery Dive . en-US.
- Web site: 2024-03-19 . New ShopRite includes offerings from Fairway, Gourmet Garage . 2024-08-14 . Supermarket News . en.
