Global Food Expanding to Baltimore Market

Global Food, a regional supermarket chain that sells a wide range of international foods, has signed a lease with Vienna, Va.-based Atlantic Realty Cos. to open its first store in the Baltimore market, according to published reports. Owned by Sterling, Va.-based Supermax Enterprises, the food retailer will open the location within 36,360 square feet of space at Meadows Shopping Center in Woodlawn, Md. The site formerly housed a Price Rite supermarket.

Family-owned Global Food already operates locations in Oxon Hill and Silver Spring, Md., and Alexandria, Manassas and Woodbridge, Va., along with a distribution center in Sterling.

“Global Food is looking to expand in the highly competitive Mid-Atlantic Baltimore-Washington, D.C., region,” grocery industry observer Jeremy Diamond, director of Baltimore-based Diamond Marketing Group, told Progressive Grocer. “Their upcoming Woodlawn, Md., store … will cater to the neighborhood’s diverse clientele. From a marketing standpoint, it makes sense that Global Food will be looking at more locations in the area. They do well selling Asian, Indian, Middle Eastern and other ethnic foods. People in general are expanding their home-cooking capabilities since the pandemic stopped folks from eating out at restaurants.” 

Among the competitors that Global Food will face in the overstored Baltimore market is Lyndhurst, N.J.-based Korean food purveyor H Mart, Diamond noted in the Baltimore Sun.

Keasbey, N.J.-based Wakefern Food Corp., the largest retailer-owned supermarket cooperative in the United States, comprises nearly 50 members that independently own and operate more than 300 supermarkets under the ShopRite banner in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware, as well as more than 60 Price Rite stores in Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland. The company is No. 23 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2021 listing of North America’s top retailers of food and consumables, while H Mart is No. 89 on the list.