I S S U E 1

Hispanics in New York City are more likely than Hispanics in other parts of the country to shop in local supermarkets than national chains, according to a 1998 study of the Washington, D.C.-based Food Marketing Institute. That's fueled in part by the area's high concentration of local stores versus chains. City and state officials did not return repeated phone calls seeking statistics on the number of bodegas in the city.

However, the city boasts more than 4,000 food and convenience stores, according to data compiled by Reach Marketing, a Westport, Conn.-based marketing and information company. Retail consultant Ken Teague says as many as two-thirds of that number, or more than 2,700, may be bodegas.

Industry experts like him are loath to offer a rigid definition of a bodega. "I know a bodega when I see one," Teague says. "It's a mom-and-pop storefront. There's one exit, usually one person behind the counter." Small and cramped to some signifies intimacy to others. "More Spanish-dependent shoppers are more comfortable shopping at Hispanic supermarkets and bodegas," says the Food Marketing Institute report.

At J.F. Grocery, Spanish music plays constantly in the background and customers enter dancing, snapping their fingers or moving to the beat as they await hot and cold sandwiches. Vega greets several customers by name, bantering with them and switching easily from Spanish to English. The store has the flavor of a home away from home for residents of this Spanish Harlem neighborhood.

Visitors love the homey atmosphere, too. Tony Rodriguez is part of a construction crew working on a building across the street from the bodega. He has been coming in every day for lunch since October. "I heard they got good sandwiches," he says. "Reputation." Josephine Haynesworth comes in looking for her granddaughter, who was supposed to meet her at the corner store. "I've been coming here nearly every day for 25 years," she says. "I go to Pathmark for certain things, but I come here for sandwiches, washing powders, bleaches, soda, cat food." Shoppers also look to bodegas for the specialty foods — vegetables such as yucca and plantains, an abundance of canned beans, a selection of seasonings and spices — they provide from Latin America.

Besides its neighbors who seek those specialty foods or the company in a bodega, J.F. Grocery has a few other regular customers. Some are so regular, they're ignored.

During lunch hour on a recent week day, nobody pays any attention to a street vendor selling knives. Nobody, except Rodriguez, the construction worker. "What do I, look like O.J.?" he asks. His humor is lost on the vendor, who leaves without making a sale, and without interrupting the beat of the people gathered in the front, chatting and laughing.