South Asian grocery chain Apna Bazar enters Suffolk market, takes over Commack supermarket

When Sanjha Bazaar opened in Commack in 2024, the grocery store's owner hoped to draw shoppers to what would be the largest South Asian supermarket in Suffolk County and spare residents a trip west to Hicksville.

But shoppers mostly still drifted to Hicksville, a hub of South Asian grocery stores, to buy their produce and assortment of spices, from paneer (cheese), kala chana (black chickpeas), biryani rice to savory snacks and sweets.

After owner Mohinder Pal Singh saw sluggish sales, the store closed last month and reopened May 7 as part of the Apna Bazar chain, the second-largest South Asian grocer in the United States, with Singh partnering with the Hicksville-based retailer.

“They are a huge brand, and they come with a lot of power," Singh said. "As far as the merchandising of things, the pricing, the variety. ... I was missing all that. But I knew this place would be booming one day."

The 19,500-square-foot store, now called Apna Bazar, has lower grocery prices, an expanded and diverse inventory, and an upgraded cafe menu, said Singh, who now is a minority owner of the store. The supermarket was bustling Thursday with shoppers loading spices, fresh produce, halal meat ands other foods in their shopping carts.   

With the Commack store, Apna Bazar is making its foray into Suffolk County, as the chain is evolving into one-stop shopping for a more diverse pool of customers, the retailer's leaders said.

Apna is among a growing number of ethnic grocers on Long Island — and nationwide — as they pull foreign-born customers seeking foods popular in their homelands, and U.S.-born shoppers desiring new flavors, retail experts said. 

Apna has been able to carve out a niche for itself by having its own product lines, about 70% of the food sold in stores are its own private-label brands, said Karun Bhardwaj, managing director and son of one of the co-founders. To keep its prices competitive, the chain imports food directly from South Asia and the Caribbean without using a distributor and operates warehouses in Hicksville and Queens, he said.

“What really sets us apart is our pricing," Bhardwaj said. "All of our customers come to us because we’ll be significantly lower than the competitors,” he said.

Apna's start in Queens

Friends Desh Bhardwaj and Jaswinder Singh, both of whom emigrated from India in 1985, founded Apna Bazar in Jackson Heights, Queens, in 1996.

The chain now has 30 locations, including five franchises, in seven states, including New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut and California. The grocer opened two stores — in Valley Stream and Coney Island — in 2025 and it will open three more this year, including one in Nassau County, said Karun Bhardwaj, son of co-founder Desh Bhardwaj.

He declined to say where in Nassau County the store will open.

The other two new stores will open in a former Stop & Shop supermarket space in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, in August and Hillside Avenue in Jamaica, Queens, in the fall.

Apna Bazar declined to disclose its financial data but Karun Bhardwaj said the 350-employee chain is seeing strong growth, which is being fueled in part by more customers of South Asian and Caribbean descent over the last decade, he said.

The number of foreign-born residents on Long Island increased 20% to 581,271 between 2010 and 2024, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates. Among that group, the number born in South Central Asian countries, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, increased 34% to 73,917 people, while the number of Long Island residents born in the Caribbean increased 24% to 101,716 people. 

Apna's growth also comes from the increasing number of American-born customers who are seeking new flavors, Karun Bhardwaj said.

“That’s the newest thing we’ve noticed, which is why we’re trying to do bigger stores now," he said. "So, like in Queens, we can’t find big footprints, but on Long Island, we’re trying to bring in more American products,” he said.

Previously, new Apna Bazar stores occupied between 7,000 and 12,000 square feet, but now the chain wants at least 20,000 square feet for new stores, Karun Bhardwaj said.

Apna doesn't select store sites based on a community's median income but it does stock the stores with products the community wishes to see, Desh Bhardwaj said. 

Apna stores have been evolving into one-stop shopping places for a wider pool of customers, said Harpreet Singh, a managing director at Apna and son of co-founder Jaswinder Singh. 

“Our community, they focus on our specialty stores because they know they can get the full range of products that they need here," instead of buying groceries from multiple retailers, he said.

On Thursday afternoon, shopper Khadijah Maraj, of Brentwood, who relocated with her family from Ozone Park, Queens, last year, said she welcomed the arrival of Apna Bazar in Commack.

Maraj, a Trinidad native, said she is a fan of the retailer's spices, halal meat, fresh produce and competitive prices.

The store also offers a lot of value, particularly in bulk items, said Maraj, 32.

“If you buy bulk things, you don’t have to come back in like, maybe a month,” she said.

Northport resident Debbie Finke, 67, used to shop at the Apna Bazar in Hicksville once or twice a month.

She and her husband were thrilled about the opening of the Commack store, which is closer to their home.

“There’s just certain staples, the nuts, the teas, the desserts ... that are different. And the vegetables always look great," she said Thursday.

"And the prices are low, so ... we try different things here and there,” she said.

Growth in ethnic stores

Nationwide, ethnic grocers are seeing "tremendous growth" because they offer unique products and good value, said Jon Hauptman, founder of Price Dimensions, a Chicago-based pricing adviser for supermarket chains.

Compared to mainstream supermarkets, the specialty retailers tend to have more of their sales come from their fresh departments, such as produce and meat, which have higher profit margins than packaged goods, he said.

“It allows them to selectively invest in lower prices in the store, particularly on promotional prices,” he said.

On Long Island, ethnic grocery stores that have opened in the past five years include South Asian grocery store Deshi Halal Supermarket in Bethpage; Gala Foods Supermarket, a Hispanic-format store in Centereach; Hispanic-format store Gala Fresh Farms in Shirley and Lami African Market in Lynbrook.

A high-end, Melville-based Italian specialty grocer, Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace, which has 12 stores in New York and New Jersey, plans to open two more Long Island stores by late 2026.

Sales of ethnic food account for a small share of total grocery sales in the United States, but the segment's strong growth is leading more mainstream grocers to stock ethnic products, retail experts said.

Ethnic grocery sales at various types of stores, including mainstream supermarkets, accounted for 14% of the overall $1.2 trillion that was spent on groceries in the one-year period that ended May 9, according to data from NielsenIQ, a Chicago-based market research firm. The largest segment of ethnic spending was for Italian products, with $16 billion spent and 0.4% sales growth during the year. The second-largest amount of spending was for Asian products, sales of which grew 4.1% to $10.1 billion.