Bodega fighting to survive in slump

Sales drop, bills rise in New York

Julio Pimentel is trying to keep his bodega open as others close across New York. His rent and other expenses have risen dramatically, but the shop's poor customers are unable to pay more. (JENNIFER S. ALTMAN/LOS ANGELES TIMES)

NEW YORK - The sun gleams off the windows of an East Harlem "bodega," as owner Julio Pimentel unlocks the door and steps behind the counter. He switches on a fan and tunes the radio to a Spanish station.

It is 7 a.m. on a Friday. The rent is due, and Pimentel does not know whether he can pay. When he took over the small grocery eight years ago, his monthly rent was $1,500. Now it's $3,300.

Food prices have gone up, and his customers don't spend like they used to. Pimentel pays more for goods, but won't raise his prices. His clientele can't afford to pay more. They are mostly poor residents from housing projects, shelters, and run-down apartments in the neighborhood. Nearly everyone is struggling.

Across the city, a food crisis is unfolding in low-income neighborhoods as one-third of New York's markets have closed over the last five years, according to a recent city report.

Many New Yorkers don't own cars, so a nearby store is important when grocery shopping means traveling by foot, cab, or subway.

Well-to-do residents can pay to order groceries online and have them delivered; poor residents must turn to the city's bodegas, the crowded corner grocery stores that have been part of the texture of New York for decades.

"The sales have been down for the last nine months," says Jose Fernandez, president of the Bodega Association of the United States, which represents 7,800 of New York's 11,400 bodegas.

A weakening economy and rising rents and food prices have decreased the number of bodegas in New York by nearly 1,000 from two years ago, according to his organization's most recent tally.

New York's first bodegas were started by Puerto Rican and Dominican entrepreneurs in the 1960s and 1970s. The Spanish word comes from "bodeguita," a general store in Latin America, and has come to refer to such shops owned by people of all ethnic backgrounds.

In the last decade, many Hispanic shop owners have left to open bodegas in Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, or Connecticut, or moved on to bigger businesses, passing their shops to other immigrants, including Koreans, Middle Easterners, and the newest wave of Hispanic immigrants, Mexicans.

Pimentel, an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, is hanging on. "It's hard. I think it's going to be worse for New York," he says. "People are looking for special prices. Sometimes bodegas can't give special prices."

His shop, Lexington Avenue Food and Deli Corp., sits at a crossroads where condo developments and pricey outdoor cafes end and low-income housing projects and check-cashing businesses begin.

The bodega is slightly bigger than a dine-in taco stand with three aisles of goods: guava jelly, coconut milk, bread, beans, mango juice, cactus plants, blackened bananas, and pork rinds.

On the shelves near the front and side windows are fabric softeners and shampoos. Toilet paper, dolls, masking tape, paintbrushes, and barbecue lighters reach to the ceiling.

Behind the front counter, a shelf is crammed with flashlights, cigars, a package of coffee cake, canned octopus in garlic, Vienna sausages, toy guns, a Puerto Rican flag, $2 calling cards labeled "Conversacion."

Pimentel owes $1,400 to the power company and $1,300 in rent for the Bronx apartment he shares with his wife. They have other debts, too. He has saved money to pay for some bills, but it's not enough to cover the bodega rent, too. To pay on time, he has to earn $3,300 today. If he keeps falling behind, the debt could swallow him.

At 11:30 p.m., when Pimentel's son Michael closes, earnings are up to $1,785. But Pimentel has spent $2,492 restocking the sparse shelves. "I spent more money than I made," he says.

He still doesn't have enough to pay the rent. There is a 10-day grace period. Tomorrow, Pimentel will try again.