Edwin Gomez walks the aisle of Tribeca's new Best Market, the store that he is managing. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib
Edwin Gomez, 33, is the general manager of the new Best Market, which officially opened on Friday in the space vacated by The Food Emporium in Tribeca, at Greenwich and Duane Streets. A native of El Salvador, Gomez came to the U.S. with his brother at age 12 and took his first grocery job, at Key Food, while in high school. He began as a stock person with Best Market (then Best Yet) while in college and has been with the 30-store, family-owned chain ever since. On Thursday, the Trib interviewed Gomez about the new store.
What physical changes did you make to the store?
All the flooring is new. There are new or refurbished refrigeration cases. We did a lot with the gas lines, all the drainage, everything got redone. We tried to keep the same layout but to have more room in the aisles for the customers and the handicapped. So we have different shelf sizes. We tried to use narrow shelves so you can put less product in them but there’s more room for people to walk through. The biggest one we have is 22 inches.
The only section that might look bigger is the prepared food area. That’s because from what I understand Food Emporium had some problems with the city about the permits for the back. They were not complying with the requirements for the kitchen so they were not serving hot food. So we had to redo that whole section. We’ve complied with everything the city requires and now we’re making hot food.
How many employees do you have, and are you fully staffed?
Now we have about 96 employees total and we’re still hiring because there are departments that still need more help. We’re still looking for deli people, prepared food, dairy, grocery.
What about cashiers?
We don’t have people at every register now because some cashiers are training. We have hired the people but since they need to be trained we send them to another store. Some are training in Harlem, some are training in Astoria. They go there for at least 16 hours to train. If they need more training we give them more time before they to come to us.
We only have seven registers because we’re trying to use the same layout as The Food Emporium. We’re going to see if we can add one more but it’s kind of hard because of the space.
What is the strength of the store in terms of the products you offer?
It’s a regular supermarket. We carry what you would find in any supermarket. We carry some high-end items but we try to stick to the basics. Yesterday, a customer asked me, do you carry Red Pack tomatoes. Yes we do. Now some of the stores don’t carry it because they feel it’s not fancy enough, not high end. Any item you guys need, if we feel we can get it, we get it for you. And if it’s high end we get it for you as well.
How should customers make their requests?
You can just let one of the employees know and they will direct you to the department manager. He will take a note and in the next couple of weeks we’ll start seeing what we can change. But right now we’re trying to stick to what corporate wants. They have a plan about how they think products are going to sell, but each neighborhood is different.They know that. So they tell us to go by what they want for now and after we start to see what customers want and what sells, then we’ll start moving everything around.
So they didn’t decide to sell certain things because of all the wealthy people in the neighborhood?
We thought about it but then we saw Whole Foods down the block. Whole Foods is pretty much all high end and organic. We understand that people want that and we are going to carry that ourselves but not to the extent that everything is going to be like that. We do a lot of organic in Harlem because we don’t have Whole Foods down the block. Here, we feel like if you want something high end most likely you’re going to go to Whole Foods. That’s all they do. If you come to us we have the basics. If you want something particular we can get it for you. We do have organic produce, organic meats, organic dairy products, we have a small section of organics. If we see the demand keeps growing then we can expand and bring more into it. So far they’re trying to mimic as much as they can from the Harlem store because that’s the only one of our 30 stores that we have in the city.
Are you offering special prices to get people into the store?
Not really. We’re running the same prices that the Harlem store is running now and it’s going to stay like that. We have a weekly circular in the store that comes out every Friday. The sale starts on Friday and ends on Thursday.
Anything you would like to add?
We want everyone to know that when it comes to Best Market, the customer is always first. Whatever you need, we’re going to take care of you guys. We’re going to keep the prices as low as we can so we can keep everyone happy.