Fine Fare

This supermarket is big, always have what i need, and fair prices. There’s another fine fare on 112 that’s closer to my house and I rather come to this one

The store is decent, but the management needs to train some of those clerks in the basics of customer service: greeting the customer, saying thank you, and saying goodbye. That’s not a lot to ask for, is it?

This is the best Supermarket in Manhattan! Here’s why: It’s Clean, It’s Big, Staff is Friendly and Polite — if you ask where something is, they walk you to where it is. The prices are great. I come down from 125^th St to shop there. Love this place.

Worst grocery store ever! Lines are always long because of slow as death employees. I always regret going here!!!

Worse than I thought! Trying to buy groceries is a major chore! They had what I was looking for, but the prices was questionable. Check out lines are long and slow. The staff is incompetent. And there is an idiot behind me blasting a radio and management is doing nothing. Avoid like the plague!

Great selection, generally good prices, lots of positives. But at both this and the 37 – 41 Lenox Ave location, there are a great many items without marked prices. Get to the cash register and if you bother to watch closely you’re in for a big surprise. The staff make up excuses (I’ve mentioned it a number of times), and a senior staff member told me today he’s always telling the owner about this complaint from customers, but nothing changes. No surprise that the staff seem very unhappy and unmotivated.

My love of this Fine Fare prompted me to restart my Unilocal reviews. Yes, I love this grocery store that much. Grocery shopping is something that I truly enjoy. In fact, it’s something that I do at least three times a week. While I would LOVE to shop often at Whole Foods, my budget doesn’t stretch that far and plus I like shopping in my neighborhood.
For selection, quality and price, this Fine Fare trumps Trader Joes, Best Yet and Fairway. I also love how this grocery store packs so much into a nice confined space so it’s hard to waste too much time. And I welcome the fact that they don’t have so much prepared foods. I go to the grocery store to buy food to cook, not to buy takeout food.
The sales are amazing. They are so amazing that you have to jump on them or the price will double by the next week. Avocados for $ 1. Mangoes for $ 1. Chicken quarters for $.59 a pound. Chicken breast for $ 1.79 a pound. Haagen Daas 2 for $ 7. I once caught a Fage yogurt 5/​$ 5 sale (bought 15 of them)! Even when I see a sale, I’ll stock up and if I buy something unripe, my produce will last two to three weeks, which is very impressive. They even offer veggies in small packages.
I also like how this store offers Spanish, Caribbean, Mexican and Asian spices. There has never been a moment when I wanted to buy something out of here for a recipe and I could not find it.
Just words of caution — if you go on a Saturday or Sunday be ready for some long lines. But honestly I have never waited more than 10 minutes.
The cheese selection could certainly be bigger. And I do wish some of their meat came in smaller packages (like their veggies). But overall if you are on a budget, or you need to feed a large family good healthy meals on a budget, this is the place to go in Harlem.

I prefer this grocery store to all the others in the area, especially as far as produce and dairy. But the lines! The managers do nothing to help when the lines are really long. I have asked them if they plan to open more registers and on multiple occasions have been told a flat out «no» our even gotten a snarky remark. Why isn’t there one line that feeds into all registers? If it weren’t for the lines and unhelpful managers I would have gone with 5 stars.

It has taken 20 years for Fine Fare to realize that residents need and should have a grocery that offers decent choices. For all you new comers… back in 1987 I had to haul fresh veggies, real cheese, fresh meat and yogurt from downtown up to my home in Harlem. And you think it smells now, honey back in the day the smell floated out into the street. I’m not defending what they have now but just giving you a little history. Management is friendlier and will take your suggestions into consideration. See Diana or Marcell.

Store is OK. It’s in my neighborhood and there is nothing I dislike more than going grocery shopping, so i am really not going to travel far to do it.
BUT beware of the LONG lines at peak hours. It seems like all the other customers come in and fill their shopping carts to feed a family of 25 and someone like me gets stuck behind them in line.
I have realized two things about this location:
1. They do not have any express check out lanes. this is a MUST. They MUST get a 10 items or less line. It’s simply not fair to wait in the same long line if all you want to buy is a ready made salad, for example
2. Go during hours when nobody else will be there. Saturday afternoon — NO WAY! stick with sunday mornings. everyone else in the neighborhood will be in Church. Best time to breeze in and out of the store.

I liked the supermarket! It has fresh salads, ready-​to-​eat foods, and also finger food like cut up fresh fruit and vegetables. It has a range of grocery items including vegetables, dairy, and canned food items. Complete with an entire row devoted to frozen foods, they have brand name items and tons of variety. There is one downside, the dairy section, is all the way on the other side of the front where checkout is. In fact, it is all the way in the back on the far right. They hid it, so you have to wind through the tunnel of each delicious aisle of food to get there. Sneaky! My cashier was friendly and fast.

This is the best grocery store in the area. It has a great produce section and it doesn’t smell. Yes, that’s all it takes to be the better store.
One complaint I have is that their sales are often not registered in the computer. You have to watch and tell them to enter it manually. I don’t feel like remembering all that so basically I don’t take their sales seriously anymore.

Oh Fine Fare. Why are you so much more expensive, at least 20%, than Fairway? Why do you sometimes have lines that are 10 – 15 minutes long?
Your selection is decent, but your meats and produce aren’t always fresh. I’m upgrading to Best Yet.

It’s about as cheap as you’ll find in Manhattan, though the produce isn’t terribly fresh. Also a better selection than most places, though not as good as Fairway, nor with any yuppie food like at Whole Foods.

Fine Fare is a mid-​size stable grocery store with a neighborhood feel.
The store is conveniently located on the corner of Lenox Ave. & 116 street. This branch has a good product mix, great hours, CLEAN, and pro-​active customer service. This location carries most of the items that you would find in a larger chain carry, albeit some product lines might be limited or missing. If you don’t see an item/​product line the management will attempt to get it for you. This stores produce section is actually decent.
Although I think this is a solid grocery store, I do have are two issues, one, like many grocery stores, lines can be long at evening rush (peak) hours and on floor customer services. The difference her is that ALL lines are staffed. They try very hard to get people in and out in a timely manner. My second issue is staffing employees who don’t have working knowledge of the English language. A customer needed help with an item and the clerk, due to a language barrier, didn’t quite understand what the customer needed. He told the customer they didn’t have it. I gave here some direction and told this customer to ask another employ. The second employee was able to fulfill her needs. If you’re a front line employee you should be bilingual. This situation could have been bad, as the customer might not return. They (the customer) may feel the store doesn’t stock what he/​she needed or hires employees who don’t have a working knowledge of the English language making it difficult to ask for help.
This review is a summary of several visits so that I could accurately rate the store as a whole.

the store is very big, the food is fresh which are 2 pluses
minuses: lines to cashier are always long, prices could have been lower

This is a great (and surprisingly large) grocery store with alot of selection and fresh produce. I’ve consistently bought the biggest carrots there. Seriously. They’re as thick as my fist.

This is obviously a FLUKE in the Fine Fare system. I’ve never been to a Fine Fare this fine.

I had been to a few markets in the area and had begun to think that basil, pears and a decent cheese were impossible to find in Harlem. But then, I stumbled across Fine Fare one day and was amazed by the selection of this seemingly unassuming store.
Okay, so, they still didn’t have basil, but they had any other herb you could possibly want. :) Overall a fine place to go for your general (and not so general) grocery needs.

Shhhh… it’s a secret!
Like Superman hiding behind his Clark Kent glasses, this great find lurks behind a diminutive front that betrays nothing of it’s awesome interior.
I thought I was walking into a standard icky uptown supermarket situation, but upon crossing the entry realized this was not your neighbors bodega/​mart. It opens up into a space easily twice the size of the other grocery stores in the area, and has a far superior selection of produce, deli, gourmet cheeses, healthy grocery options, and even a little bakery. What’s that I see? Shitake mushrooms? And over there, is that Edam cheese? No really, it can’t be, do I spy pomegranate apple cider over yonder?
Before this discovery, I did not believe in a God. Now I know one must only scratch beneath the surface of a dingy storefront to find their local mecca. Thanks God! I believe in you now!