Shoppers at four Nassau County grocery stores are watching their neighborhood Western Beef turn into something new this week. The rolling sign changes began Tuesday in Elmont and will finish by Friday in Carle Place, as parent company Bogopa Service Corp. converts the warehouse-style meat markets into full-service Food Bazaar supermarkets.
Bogopa is in the process of purchasing all four Western Beef locations on Long Island, according to Daily Voice. The stores set to change include 1717 Old Dutch Broadway in Elmont, 322 Nassau Road in Roosevelt, 605 Woodfield Road in West Hempstead, and 192 Glen Cove Road in Carle Place. Per Food Trade News, the sign transitions are scheduled one at a time: Elmont on Tuesday, Roosevelt on Wednesday, West Hempstead on Thursday, and Carle Place on Friday.
A Much Bigger Deal Than Four Storefronts
The Nassau conversions are just one piece of a far larger transaction. Bogopa is purchasing 14 of Western Beef's 19 stores across the New York City metro area, according to Daily Voice's reporting, citing Newsday. Beyond the four Nassau County properties, the acquisition covers six Western Beef locations in the Bronx, two on Staten Island, one in Brooklyn, and one in Queens, as Newsday reports — meaning Nassau accounts for less than a third of the multi-borough buyout.
Western Beef isn't disappearing entirely. The company is holding on to five of its 19 stores, keeping locations on White Plains Road in the Bronx, Rockaway Boulevard in South Ozone Park, Metropolitan Avenue in Ridgewood, and both Jamaica Avenue and Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn, according to the Melville Chamber of Commerce. Each of the 14 sales was structured as an individual deal, according to Newsday's reporting — a structure reflected in paperwork filed with the New York Department of State, where Bogopa registered 14 separate corporate entities on September 11, including Bogopa Dutch Broadway Inc., Bogopa Roosevelt Inc., Bogopa Woodfield Inc., and Bogopa Voice Inc. for the Nassau County properties, per the Melville Chamber of Commerce.
From Warehouse Meat to Full-Service Counters
The shift in ownership also means a shift in shopping experience. Bogopa plans to renovate the acquired locations with larger full-service deli, seafood, butcher, and bakery counters, while broadening the selection of international foods, Newsday reports. That marks a departure from Western Beef's longtime warehouse-style meat market model toward Food Bazaar's international supermarket format.
Edward Suh, Bogopa's president and CEO, told Newsday that Western Beef employees will be offered the opportunity to remain on staff as Food Bazaar employees. Suh said those workers will join current Food Bazaar employees as members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union once the sales close, according to the same report.
A Company Built On International Groceries
Bogopa was founded in Queens in 1988 by Korean-born Francis An, who had lived in Argentina before settling in New York, according to LongIsland.com. An named the business Bogopa — Korean for Yearning for You — with the goal of supplying Latin American and international ingredients to communities underserved by major supermarket chains, the outlet notes. Food Bazaar now operates 38 locations across New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut; the Western Beef acquisition would bring that total to 52 and more than double its Long Island presence from three stores to seven, per Daily Voice's report citing Newsday figures.
Before this deal, Food Bazaar's three existing Long Island stores sat at 101 Wicks Road in Brentwood, 1258 Corporate Drive in Westbury, and 132 Fulton Avenue in Hempstead, according to LongIsland.com. Hoodline has previously covered Food Bazaar's expansion and founder background in a 2016 profile of the chain.
Timing Raises Questions For Western Beef Workers
The sale comes after Western Beef made a very different move. The company, which opened its first warehouse-style supermarket in Flushing, Queens, back in 1980, had become fully employee-owned in 2025 after selling 100% of its stock to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, following internal family disagreement over whether to keep running retail stores or redevelop the real estate, according to Food Trade News. Later, the company opted to sell 14 of its 19 stores to Bogopa instead.
That timeline leaves open questions that the dossier of regional reporting has not resolved: how proceeds from the 14 individual property sales will be distributed to Western Beef's ESOP employee shareholders, and what becomes of the five remaining Western Beef stores in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx long-term. Food Trade News frames the overall transaction as a structural shift reshaping the New York metropolitan grocery landscape.
The Western Beef sale also lands just after another major Long Island grocery shakeup. Giunta's Meat Farms completed its purchase of King Kullen Grocery Co. in October 2026, acquiring 24 King Kullen supermarkets and four Wild by Nature natural food markets, according to Mass Market Retailers. Together, the two deals mark a significant wave of consolidation among family-founded independent grocers across Long Island.
