A supermarket name Long Island shoppers have known for decades is coming off the signs. The four Western Beef stores in Nassau County, in Elmont, Roosevelt, West Hempstead and Carle Place, are becoming Food Bazaar supermarkets, part of a 14-store expansion that Food Bazaar announced on its own channels this month.

Food Bazaar, run by the Queens-based family company Bogopa, posted on October 17 that 14 new stores are coming to more neighborhoods, and its store roster now names locations on Old Dutch Broadway in Elmont and Nassau Road in Roosevelt among them. The changeover is already visible to anyone searching for their local store: the Roosevelt, West Hempstead and Carle Place locations now appear under the Food Bazaar name, with daily hours of 7 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., and the first converted store in the chain's expansion celebrated its opening this week.

What shoppers will notice

Western Beef built its Long Island following on a warehouse-style format with an emphasis on meat. Food Bazaar runs full-service international supermarkets, with large produce departments and aisles organized around what the company calls food from home, the ingredients of Latin American, Caribbean, Asian and other cuisines that mainstream chains stock thinly. The company already operates a 24-hour store in Hempstead, so Nassau shoppers have a preview a few miles away of what the converted stores are likely to become.

Western Beef is not disappearing as a company. Its own store directory continues to list locations in Queens and Brooklyn, but no longer carries any Long Island stores.

A family company built on immigrant groceries

Bogopa's story is itself a Long Island-adjacent immigrant story. Its founder, who emigrated from Korea and spent years in Argentina before settling in New York, opened the first store in Queens in 1988 after finding that New York supermarkets carried too little of what immigrant cooks actually needed. The parent company's name means yearning for you in Korean, and the chain has grown across the city on the strength of neighborhoods other grocers overlooked.

The Nassau conversions give the company its largest Long Island presence to date, and they land in a season of supermarket change here: King Kullen announced its sale to Giunta's earlier this month, meaning two of the Island's familiar grocery names are changing owners within weeks of each other.

Where the stores are

The converting locations are on Old Dutch Broadway in Elmont, Nassau Road in Roosevelt, Woodfield Road in West Hempstead and Glen Cove Road in Carle Place. Hours at the renamed stores are posted as 7 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. daily.

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