New Gala Foods Supermarket brings international flavors to Centereach

Centereach resident Niese Selmete often cooks dishes that are popular in her family’s native country, the Philippines, and Jamaica, from which her husband hails.

The recent opening of a Gala Foods Supermarket in Centereach has made it easier and quicker for her to locate international ingredients, she said. The Hispanic-format store, which carries a wide variety of foods popular in Caribbean and Latin American countries, is among a growing number of ethnic supermarkets on Long Island and nationwide.

"From other stores, I find it very hard to find the meats that I need to cook and the [other] items that I needed, but I can find it over here [at Gala Foods]. It’s closer. It’s cheaper," said Selmete, 23, who buys goat shoulders, oxtails, chicken thighs, pork bellies and other items at the new Centereach store.

The store is operated by the Gutierrez family, five Long Island siblings who are second-generation grocers who also own three other Gala Foods Supermarkets — in Brentwood, Freeport and Patchogue.

The Centereach store, which, like the others, also sells groceries carried by mainstream supermarkets, occupies a 21,000-square-foot space at 1759 Middle Country Rd., in a strip of stores that was recently built in the existing New Village Plaza.

"We definitely felt there was a need for a neighborhood grocery store in the community. We did a lot of our site visits and research. And we realized that Centereach really needed that local, neighborhood grocery store," store co-owner Edwin Gutierrez said.

There are 42 Hispanic-format, independently owned grocery stores operating as Gala Foods Supermarket, Gala Fresh Farms or Compare Foods in five states — Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, New York and North Carolina — under the umbrella of Aurora Grocery Group, a Charlotte, North Carolina-based co-op owned by the Peña, Jorge and Gutierrez families.

"We have our own independent stores, but for marketing and inventory purposes, we try to work together," Gutierrez said.

Besides the Gutierrezes’ four stores, there are four other Gala Foods Supermarkets and three Gala Fresh Farms stores on Long Island that are under the Aurora umbrella. 

The Centereach store, which opened Aug. 29 and held a grand opening Sept. 27, employs about 45 full- and part-time workers, Gutierrez said.

The full-service grocery store includes bakery, deli, seafood and meat departments, as well as hot and cold grab-and-go prepared foods and fresh produce.

Some of the foods the Centereach store carries that are popular in the Latin American community include plantain and root vegetables, such as yautia, eddoes and chayote, which is a type of squash, Gutierrez said.

Meats include beef tripe, which is the stomach lining from a cow; pork neck bones; and beef oxtail.

"But also we have your typical grocery staples that you can find anywhere else. That’s the beauty of Gala Foods: We cater to our international community, but we also have products that everyone loves and enjoys in their home," Gutierrez said.

Ethnic grocers grow, but face more competition

The number of ethnic grocery stores nationwide has boomed in the past decade with demographic shifts in the population.

On Long Island alone, Lami African Market opened in Lynbrook in March 2024, South Asian supermarket Sanjha Bazaar opened in Commack and Gala Fresh Farms opened in Shirley in November, and South Asian grocer Deshi Halal Supermarket opened in Bethpage this month.

Hispanic-format grocery store Compare Fresh will open in Hempstead in March.

Melville-based Italian specialty grocer Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace, which has 11 stores in New York and New Jersey, plans to open three more Long Island stores by late 2026.

As the number of specialty and discount grocers grows, it takes more market share from traditional supermarkets, which are in turn carrying more international foods to appeal to an increasingly diverse population. That has led to more competition for ethnic grocers, the vast majority of which are small, family-owned businesses.

"I mean we’re definitely seeing a lot of competition and the one thing that we really try to focus on is the quality of our products and the customers' experience," Gutierrez said.

Ethnic products accounted for 13% of the total $1.2 trillion in sales at all types of stores nationwide in the one-year period that ended Oct. 11, according to data from NielsenIQ, a Chicago-based market research firm. Among ethnic products, Italian items accounted for the largest share, $17.5 billion, which declined 0.2% from a year earlier, according to NielsenIQ.

The second-highest spending was for Asian products, $10.2 billion, which increased 2.7%. Ranking third were Latino products, defined as being from or inspired by countries in Latin America, which totaled $8.5 billion, a decrease of 0.8%.

Centereach friends Patricia Velazquez and Theresa Caglianone shopped at the Gala Foods store in Centereach on Friday afternoon.

"It’s great. It has everything that I need and I don’t have to travel far to get special ingredients," said Velazquez, 55, who was in the store for the first time.

"I like to make my sofrito from scratch, so they have everything that’s in there," she said. Sofrito is an aromatic blend of vegetables, herbs and spices used to flavor rice, beans, stews, fish and meat, and is popular in Puerto Rican and Latin American dishes.

Caglianone, 59, said she shopped mostly at mainstream supermarkets until she visited Gala Foods a few weeks ago.

"I came here the first time for some convenience, but then when I saw the great sales, the products ... the stuff for soup, the vegetables, everything is just so fresh," Caglianone said of the store, now her main supermarket.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.