Bodega (store)

A bodega is a small owner-operated convenience store serving hot and prepared food, often open late hours and typically with ethnic market influences. The NYC Department of Health defines a bodega as any store of sufficient size "that sells milk, meat or eggs but is not a specialty store (bakery, butcher, chocolate shop, etc) and doesn't have more than two cash registers". Most famously located on New York City's street corners and associated with immigrant communities as well as the Puerto Rican community, they are renowned for their convivial culture and colorful character. As of 2020, there were an estimated 13,000 bodegas across the city.
In Spanish, bodega is a term for "storeroom" or "wine cellar", or "warehouse", with a similar origin to the words "boutique" and "apothecary"; the precise meaning varies regionally in the Spanish language, and the later New York City term evolved from Puerto Rican and Cuban usage for "small grocery". (In contemporary Cuba, the term now usually connotes a government ration store.)
In English, the first appearance of the bodega in print dates to a travelogue of Spain from 1846, describing wine cellars. In New York City, The Sun reported the first bodega opening in 1902; it was described as a Spanish "barroom", more like a cantina. The more specific meaning of a type of New York City Puerto Rican convenience-store only came about in the mid-20th century, with the first print appearance in Time in 1956; though the term has also been applied retrospectively to such establishments as far back as the 1920s–30s.
In a New York City context, the "bodega" resembles, and may overlap with, a delicatessen, newsstand, corner store, corner grocery store, or candy store.
Other American (particularly northeastern US) cities have similar but not precisely identical types of retail businesses, usually with a name other than "bodega." Such stores in Philadelphia are often called "papi stores" and simply "carry-out" stores in Washington D.C. and Baltimore. In some cities, they are referred to (often jokingly or deridingly) as "hood marts."
Bodegas were popularized in the mid-twentieth century by Puerto Ricans. Some stores were named after places in Puerto Rico. Although they were initially documented in the 1930s (a 50th anniversary was marked on Spanish-language radio station WADO in 1986), the first bodega may have opened even earlier. Early examples were establishments serving factory workers in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and La Marqueta in East Harlem, where stalls serving Puerto Rican staples (at first included among goods sold by local Jewish merchants) became increasingly Puerto Rican-owned in the 1920s/30s. Other Latino groups in the city have also embraced the bodega, serving a wider variety of Latin American cuisine. Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños at CUNY Hunter College owns a collection of historical bodega photography. Despite their Hispanic origins, by the late 2010s approximately half of all bodegas were operated by Yemeni American immigrants. Yemeni business owners led a campaign of bodega closures in February 2017 in protest of the Trump travel ban.
One famous bodega, Gem Spa, was a gathering place for beat poets in New York's Greenwich Village in the 1960s. Gem Spa is also thought by some to be the birthplace of the egg cream.
In the 1998 stoner comedy Half Baked, Thurgood, played by Dave Chappelle, refers to purchasing cannabis at bodegas: "You can get the stuff at little corner stores called bodegas. Say it with me – BO-DE-GAS. Yes, very good! These places always have incredibly old products, but the weed ain't bad."
Lin-Manuel Miranda's 2005 musical In the Heights centers on the character of Usnavi, the owner of a local bodega in Washington Heights, Manhattan.
In 2018, Camden, New Jersey, rapper Mir Fontane [es] released an EP titled Macaroni Tony featuring the track "Bodega" that emphasizes the central role bodegas play in urban communities. When asked about bodegas, Mir Fontane explained: "To me, the bodega always represented a hub for the community ... but it also embodies the spirit of the hustle and grind. The owner of the bodega is one of the first true businessmen you meet growing up in the hood."
A 2019 Saturday Night Live skit references New York City bodegas.