Our Local Supermarket - Not Your Average Ghettomart

This may be a sign of gentrification, but it's a good one. Even the long time residents can appreciate organic food items. That is, if they can afford them. For a long time Food Dimensions didn't carry organic eggs because when they first tried doing so, they found people switching the organic eggs into the regular cartons so they wouldn't have to pay so much. Now the organic eggs are bound with packing tape.

Yautia Lila, cocomalanga, eddoes and yampi yams. Not likely to find these items in your white suburban supermarket.

For all your West Indian cooking needs.

Fresh fish, and live lobsters. At affordable prices to boot.

Today's post was prompted by a comment from Jimmy Legs asking about our local supermarket, Food Dimensions. Being a Park Slope Food Co-op member and an earthy earth mom on a budget who's bought into the organic marketing ploy I 'm afraid I don't shop here much. But when I do, I'm never disappointed. They have all the usual stuff you'd find in your average Brooklyn chain supermarket, plus an amazing produce section, an ever expanding organic food selection, exotic spices and herbs, incredibly fresh fish, and if you eat meat, they've got a huge carnage section as well.

For those of you who make the trek to Brooklyn Natural or Whole Foods, The last time I checked Food Dimensions had the following organic items: three types of milk, yogurt, baby food, applesauce, bread, eggs and sugar; and for vegetarians, soy milk, rice milk, veggie sausage, and some weird type of tofu that had a strange texture. But the more people request organic items the more they'll carry. What I'd really love to see in our neighbourhood is fresh organic produce. But maybe we're better off joining the Bed-Stuy CSA for that. I believe their application deadline is coming up.

Food Dimensions also has these great dried herbs labeled in Spanish that are on a little freestanding post that mysteriously moves around the store, so I have to keep hunting for it. But it's worth looking for, especially in the winter, as a handful of the lemongrass with a large ginger root cut in chunks, boiled in a pot of water for an hour or so makes a tea that will chase away any oncoming cold.

And speaking of cold, the produce, fish and meat sections are are located in the back of the store, an enormous area that is kept at frigid temperatures and is absolutely the best place to be at the height of summer.

Food Dimensions is part of a small independent chain of supermarkets owned by Bogopa:

The name Bogopa comes from a Korean phrase meaning “Yearning for you”. This name was given to our Company by the father of our President and Founder Mr. Francis An. September 22, 1997 Mr. An launched his fifth store, and the first store under the Food Dimensions banner. This one is located at 1102 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11206.

Two years ago they had a scandal over their employment of people to do the job of bagging groceries, who were never paid, and then sued Bogopa for firing them as reported in the Queens Ledger:

If the claims of nine recently fired grocery baggers are true, the biggest supermarkets in Bushwick and Ridgewood have been treating local immigrants, for the past seven years plus, as if they were slaves.

The really strange part of the story is that, unless the nine had been fired en masse last November, they all, by their own admission, would probably still be working fifty- to sixty-hour weeks for a wage of exactly $0 per hour.

Although, technically, they were never employees as they never received pay stubs:

According to the plaintiffs, they all have regular schedules and were routinely asked to do tasks other than bag groceries, like clean and restock the aisles and fill-in as cashiers. After bagging groceries in shifts of ten hours or longer, they claim, tips from customers would provide them with, on average, $20 to $25 per day, well below the minimum wage.

Now the cashiers do everything - scanning the food items, handling the cash and bagging groceries. The plastic tip tubs remain, however. Although I assume that the current cashiers are paid employees.

Food Dimensions has some competition in the form of Mr. Kiwi's, which opened at the beginning of 2008 and is less than half a block away. Supposedly their produce is cheaper than Food Dimensions and they carry a small selection of organic items as well.

The choice is up to you. Food Dimensions is open from 7am -11pm daily. And their slogan says it all: