Keeping the Bodega in the Family

Bodegas have long played vital commercial and cultural roles in the Latinx communities of New York City. Traditionally located in neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs where Caribbean people migrated and built their life and community, these small owner-operated convenience stores have provided the cultural food and environment for thousands of people and their children.

While bodegas get their name from wine cellars in Spain, many of the neighborhood stores were started by Puerto Ricans who migrated to the city in masses as early as the 1920s.

They are modeled after colmados, mini-market-like shops popular in the Caribbean and to a certain extent in Latin America. Bodegas usually sold all the Caribbean staples that families needed to feel right at home and continue their culinary traditions in their host countries. However, over the years, gentrification and displacement have reduced the number of New York City's bodegas to 7,000 in 2023 from 16,500 in 2009.

Sonia Ramirez, the daughter of the owner of Sonny's Grocery in the Hell's Kitchen section of Manhattan, will be the sole inheritor of one of those remaining bodegas. She will not only continue the family legacy but further cultivate an important part of local communities that are slowly disappearing.

"I think [when a bodega closes], what's lost is the sense of culture that you feel when you walk into that store," says Ramirez. "You also lose the opportunity to have access to [certain] foods. It's a loss to the community, to all the working-class families that rely on your services. I think it's detrimental, to be honest."

Migrating to Hell's Kitchen in the 1950s, Sonel "Sonny" Ramirez, who is now in his 90s, came with his family from Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, with dreams of financial opportunity to advance the next generation.

"I don't think [their dreams] were lavish, to be honest. I don't think that they had super luxurious dreams to be millionaires. I think it was very basic [for] my father and his brothers and sisters — their parents laid the foundation of coming here, having an opportunity and to ensure that all of their kids had food on the table," says his daughter.

Sonny's Grocery was the first family business, opened in the 1970s by Sonny and his father, Sonia's grandfather. It was a welcome addition that immediately served the bustling Black and Latinx working-class people who lived in the area. Sonny married a Puerto Rican woman from San Lorenzo whom he met in Hell's Kitchen, and they had their only child, Sonia.

Growing up in that part of the city in the 1980s, Sonia remembers lots of diners, ice cream shops and pizza places where slices were a dollar and many newsstands where she would always get the newspaper. "I just remember that it was a safe space to live. I had a very happy childhood," she says.

Over the years the family opened a meat market across the street from the bodega on 52nd Street and 10th Avenue and bought several buildings in the surrounding area.

Today, in neighborhoods like Hell's Kitchen that have undergone drastic rent increases, many small businesses have been forced to close. Sonny's Grocery too was under threat of closing in 2011 for several reasons, including the development company they were leasing from wanting to build a new housing development. The bodega was able to stay, but other threats have persisted over the years, such as supermarkets like Williams or bigger stores like Target opening in the area.

Yet, Sonny says he has never felt pressured to change his inventory. Since the family opened Sonny's, it has specialized in selling all types of Latin foods, including produce like platanos and yucas to Goya beans and special nostalgic treats for children.

"[The bodega], I think, is an opportunity for families just to come in . . . with their little kids and have them pick out [their] favorite ice cream cone," Sonia says. Even though Sonia herself may feel pressured at times to provide products like organic butter that the newer residents ask for, she understands the value in not becoming like every other grocery, keeping to bodega tradition, and providing that safe space she experienced in childhood.

Before deciding to work full-time in the family business in May 2024, Sonia worked in the corporate world for eight years, but she always kept it at a distance, helping with minor tasks like making phone calls and handling some bills. However, as her father grew older and his health declined, she felt it was the right time to leave the corporate world and fully dedicate herself to not only the businesses, but to help her family, which in the Latinx community is always number one.

She has found herself in an interesting position managing businesses that are predominantly male dominated. The people she interacts with daily, from other building and business owners to vendors, are almost all men.

"I think that I bring a very unique, and very different style of operation into this type of business," she says. "I don't necessarily think of it as a lot of pressure for me versus I think of it as the new way forward, who is going to be, hopefully, and will continue to be a very successful Latina woman who is running a Puerto Rican, Latin American grocery store in Hell's Kitchen."

This unique approach culminates in believing in more quality of life, reinvesting in the community, being the brains behind the operation from an administrative standpoint and knowing their customers and continuing to build solid relationships. "I think it's those solid relationships that are the reason why we're still in business, because like I said, it's not lucrative and the money is not coming in as I would want it to," Sonia says.

Even though the bodega isn't lucrative, it isn't all about money. Sonny's Grocery is about the positive feelings people get when they enter as they hear Salsa music in the background; they feel like they are back in Puerto Rico. It's about having the foods that the community wants and needs and having a comfortable place to go to after a hard day. That hasn't changed much, even though everything else has. In the bodega, people still grab their usual soda, beer or plantains and rush home to be with their family.

"I think that the best way that we can help is by being here and providing the groceries that they need, providing the meat that they need, providing housing when it's available," Sonia says. "I think that that's how we do our part and that we're stable as a business."

As she learns from her father and gradually takes over, Sonia works every day to continue to provide this third space for many years to come.

"We're going to continue to be around for decades," Ramirez says confidently. "No matter who comes around, no matter what corporate businesses come around, we're here to stay. It's not only because it's my family's legacy, but it's also about being a staple in this community for the community."

Damaly Gonzalez is a Brooklynite, Williamsburg-native of Puerto Rican descent that goes by she/her/hers. She is a freelance identity and culture journalist who writes about music, art, film/tv, and social justice issues through a critical and analytical lens. Her work mainly focuses on latinidad, memory, and displacement. She has been published in Refinery29, Rolling Stone, ARTNews, and others. Follow her on Instagram @damalywrites. Read More