Seasons Kosher Supermarkets to Open 3 New Stores

Seasons Kosher Supermarkets has revealed plans to open three new stores in Scarsdale, N.Y.; Baltimore and Cleveland, expanding from its established footprint in New York and New Jersey. The first of these stores to open will be the Baltimore location, in early July, while the Scarsdale supermarket will open in August and the Cleveland store will make its debut in 2018. These new supermarkets will make Seasons the “first national kosher supermarket chain,” in the words of its design firm, Jamesburg, N.J.-based Ruitenberg Lind Design Group (RLDG).

Mayer Gold, CEO of Flushing, N.Y.-based Seasons, said that the company is expanding into areas where the demographics indicate that there’s a need. The chain’s newest location, a 35,000-square-foot location in Clifton, N.J., that opened last year, is larger than a typical Seasons. The company also operates two stores in Lawrence, N.Y., including a Seasons Express that offers many convenient prepared food options and is, according to Gold, the only kosher grocery store in the country open 24 hours a day except Saturday, when all Seasons stores are closed to observe the Jewish sabbath. The grocers’ other stores are in New York's Upper West Side and Flushing neighborhoods, and Lakewood, N.J.

“We are strictly kosher, but a significant portion of our customers are not Jewish,” added Gold. “Keeping kosher today is not the same it was years ago, because you can get everything you need in one store, in most cases. Our Clifton store probably has the largest Passover section in New Jersey, and maybe New York as well.”

RLDG Director Paul Ruitenberg noted that Seasons has “an extremely successful blueprint that makes the shopping experience enjoyable and makes people want to come back. The key elements are food, customer service, store cleanliness and aesthetics, and how they treat the community.”