Open less than six months, the Big Apple Supermarket in the Brook Run Shopping Center in northern Henrico County is closing.
Employees at the store said today, Sunday, will be the last day the store operates.
General manager Joseph Turner confirmed Saturday that the store was closing but referred other questions to a store official who Turner said would not be available until Monday.
The independent grocery store opened on May 21 in the 58,000-square-foot space at 5700 Brook Road. It was a former Martin’s Food Markets store that had closed in August 2017 as the Martin’s chain exited the Richmond market. It had been a Ukrop’s grocery store before the family-owned chain was sold to Martin’s.
Big Apple carried traditional grocery items, and about 15 to 20 percent of its products were ethnic and international foods.
The store’s owner, Korean-American businessman David Im through his IM Investments entity, also owns a Big Apple Supermarket at 2916 Jefferson Davis Highway in South Richmond. That store opened in 2005.
The new store promised to be something different in a market saturated with grocery options.
“You have to be different. We are trying to set ourselves apart,” Turner said in a May interview during the store’s opening week. A grocery store veteran, Turner has been in the grocery business for more than four decades, including stints at Safeway, Ukrop’s Super Markets and Martin’s.
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