Sam's Caribbean Marketplace

Caribbean restaurant, Breakfast restaurant, Grocery store in West Hempstead, NY

Address

225 Hempstead Turnpike, West Hempstead, NY, 11552

Phone

(516) 481-6602

Website

sams24-7.com

About Sam's Caribbean Marketplace

Sam's Caribbean Marketplace in West Hempstead operates as both a full Caribbean grocery store and an in-house restaurant, Café on the Island, giving customers a way to shop for imported goods and eat a hot meal in the same visit. The market carries the range of products typical of a serious Caribbean grocer, from specialty produce to imported pantry staples, but its beef patties are the standout: what started on a single toaster oven has grown into sales surpassing 250,000 units a year. That volume reflects a broader specialty in prepared Caribbean foods rather than just packaged imports, with the in-store café serving home-cooked meals alongside the grocery operation. The combination of retail and prepared food under one roof lets customers pick up ingredients for cooking at home or grab a ready meal, covering both ends of how people actually eat Caribbean food day to day. Its size and depth of inventory have made it a recognized name well beyond Long Island, cited as one of the larger, more established Caribbean specialty grocers in the country. For customers seeking specific Caribbean brands or ingredients not carried at general supermarkets, Sam's has become a go-to destination.

Sam's Caribbean Marketplace was founded in 1993 by Jamaican-born Andrew Morris and his wife, Jean, who started the business with $50 and no prior retail experience. They named the store after Jean's late father, Samuel "Sam" Bonar, framing the business from the outset as a tribute to family resilience rather than just a commercial venture. The original 1,600-square-foot store opened in a Hempstead parking lot in December 1993, and within weeks both The New York Times and Newsday had written about it, with the Times calling it a "hidden treasure." The following year, the Morrises began selling beef patties out of a small toaster oven, a modest start that eventually grew into more than 250,000 patties sold annually. After 18 years at its original Hempstead location, the business relocated to West Hempstead in February 2012, and shortly after added Café on the Island, its in-store restaurant serving home-cooked meals. Over three decades, Sam's grew from a single small storefront into one of the best-known Caribbean specialty markets in the country, still under the Morris family's ownership.

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