Greenbay Market Expanding to 30th Avenue

The colorful display of produce in front of Greenbay Market on Broadway. Can we look forward to such things at their new location?

We’ve heard rumblings here and there about this big news, and Astoria Post broke it earlier this week—Greenbay is expanding to the old Rite Aid space on 30th Avenue (31-10 30th Ave, to be exact), not far from the 30th Avenue N/Q (and soon to be W) stop. This means Astorians will have another place to go to buy organic grub at this locally-owned mini-chain.

I’m a fan of Greenbay, though I don’t get there too often since I live and work a further north in Astoria and I have a pretty rad natural foods store up there, but I do enjoy shopping there when I’m in the Broadway area, and so do lots of Astorians—in fact Greenbay historically does quite well in the “Favorite natural foods store” category in our Best of Astoria competition.

The Astoria Post article basically revealed a no-brainer, that the store will be similar to the one on Broadway. If you haven’t been by lately, you might be surprised at how big it is. In the past, I’ve heard it called a “mini Whole Foods” by a fellow Astorian. There’s plenty of organic meats, cheese, fresh dairy, and pantry items; they cater to special diets and you can find specialty frozen foods; the prepared food bar is a big hit and Mackenzi reports that it’s always busy. She’s also fond of their protein smoothies and assortment of kombucha. Across the street is a smaller Greenbay location that offers lots of supplements, juices, and the like.

I’ve both reached out to the management at Greenbay and took a look at the publicly available Department of Buildings records to see if I can get more info. I have yet to hear from Greenbay management, but the DOB shows us that Greenbay is doing a pretty big renovation, including installing new flooring and ceramic tile, ceiling sheetrock, structurally reinforcing the 4,000 square foot footprint, and upgrading the plumbing. As you can expect, new freezers and countertops are going in. They’re also installing what they need for prepared food, including a gas broiler and range, coolers, an ice maker, and grease traps. New A/C is also in the plans.

Just thinking about their competition… well, they have the produce markets and two Key Foods a couple blocks away in either direction. There’s also Create, which does well with the healthy fast casual food, but they are five blocks away. Probably the one that will feel the brunt of the competition is Sai Organics, since they are trying to reach the natural/organic food shoppers. Here’s hoping there’s room for both of them.

We hear that the estimated time til it’s open is four months, but I’d bet on more like six months since ConEd has such a backlog when it comes to turning on the gas. We’ll bring you updates on the progress of the new 30th Ave. Greenbay as we get them.

This post has been edited.