Snapshot: Harvest Field Market - Tarrytown, NY

Here's a quick look at a store that specializes in fresh produce and perishables in Tarrytown, NY. It's affiliated with Krasdale's Market Fresh group. Harvest Field opened their first store at 75 Fleetwood Ave, Mount Vernon, NY in 2010 in half of a former A&P. (The other half, shockingly, became a CVS.) 2016 saw the opening of this location at 350 S Broadway, Tarrytown, which is actually two floors with grocery and deli on the main floor and produce in the basement.

This photo, submitted by an anonymous Market Report contributor, was taken in August 2018.

Snapshot: Sunflower Natural Foods Market - Woodstock, NY

Sunflower Foods is a natural and health food store located just outside of Woodstock, NY. It's part of a two-store chain that is a member of the Independent Natural Foods Retailers' Association, or INFRA. (For whatever reason, Sunflower no longer uses the generic INFRA circular; they have a customized one with their own logo at the top.)

 Glancing at this building, I had initially thought it was a former Centennial style A&P. Looking more carefully, though, it certainly is not. The building is too shallow and wide, although the roofline does share some similarities.

 Sunflower had a good selection of natural and organic products, and most likely due to its INFRA cooperative affiliation, was not insanely high-priced.

 Other than this and a few other assorted small markets, Woodstock doesn't have a supermarket. There is, however, a Hannaford about three miles south in West Hurley.

The store is located at 75 Mill Hill Rd, Woodstock, NY.

Photographed June 2017

Revisit: ShopRite - West Orange, NJ

Yesterday, we saw Aron's West Orange Market, a Kosher supermarket. We're going to revisit another West Orange supermarket today, the 68,000-square-foot ShopRite of Essex Green. Originally coming to the blog in July 2018 (check out that link for before pictures), the Essex Green store has long been a favorite of mine. Recently, the store was significantly remodeled with virtually no changes outside and few changes to the layout, but some new fixtures and all-new decor.

Storefront repainted and still looking great! Let's head in...

Brand-new decor alright! (Incidentally, this decor is so new it's only in use in one other Village store, which I've also photographed and which will be coming to the blog in a little while.) The layout remains with the bakery next to the entrance.

Great sign! I like the fonts they have used here. We can also see the bakery fixtures are all new or repainted. (Some of the bakery fixtures had already been replaced at the time of my previous visit.)

Produce looking great! Modern and attractive department signage, new flooring and displays, and refurbished track lighting. In fact, all of the lighting in the store is newly-installed LED, making the store significantly and noticeably less dingy throughout.

Looking back up towards the front of the store. Fixtures here are again new but were in place at the time of my previous visit (September 2017). I had no idea at the time, though, that they were being replaced in anticipation of a total remodel.

The prepared foods department is branded The Kitchen. Like with the bakery department, the I in Kitchen is replaced by a utensil. (It's a rolling pin in Kneaded Delights.)

I didn't get a picture of it, but just around the corner to the left here is a fantastic sign for the Village Sub Shop. As you can see in each department, the textures are great and add a lot of visual interest.

The former kosher counter behind prepared foods, previously just looking unfinished and awkward, now looks completely intentional with an Experience the Unique sign! The deli is now completely Boar's Head branded, as this is one of the relatively few ShopRite stores to carry the Boar's Head line of products.

Seafood with a really cool sign just next to deli.

Once again, service butcher goes from looking accidental (the service counter is on the diagonal, not where it says "Meat Service") to completely planned. That's the beauty of planning decor based on what the store looks like! Of course, in another ten years, this decor will be outdated and directionally challenged as well.

Streamlined back wall of the store with a bold Make Tonight Family Meal Night sign. Here's what it previously looked like.

Small kosher counter remains.

That's right folks, you're looking at a Dairy sign made entirely of pictures of milk bottles mounted on plexiglass!

Like the other departments, dairy also features some exciting textures.

We'll see this again in the last aisle, along which dairy continues.

Helping families live better is Village Super Market's slogan.

Pharmacy looking the same but slightly bluer. The former Village Horticulture Market is now simply Blooms...

Unlike most supermarkets, this store does open all the registers fairly frequently. It's always jam-packed, no matter what time of day or day of the week.

A look at the new aisle markers along the front-end.

Much brighter front-end thanks to less junk blocking the windows and new LED lights. Before we wrap up, I should make a note about the Hanes shirts here. I first bought a package of them at a TJ Maxx for 4 shirts / $12.99. I liked them, and decided to check if Kohl's had them when I happened to be near one. They had a similar brand...but for $35 for a 4-pack. I was quite happy to find that 3-packs were $11.99 at this ShopRite, on sale for half price, $5.99 -- with a $1 off coupon attached to the package. They only had one package left in my size, but that sure was a better deal! This ShopRite is located at 1 Rooney Circle, in the Essex Green Mall.

Look Inside: Compare Foods - Port Chester, NY

Returning to Port Chester for today's Look Inside. Just outside of downtown (which includes an enormous shopping mall with a Stop & Shop, which I have not visited) is this small store which opened around 2015 in a previously vacant building that probably started life as an industrial space. It operated briefly as a Met Foodmarkets before converting to Compare Foods.

The store is very nice inside, if a little dim, but that's mostly a symptom of the old building it's in. There's a large hot food bar, along with a deli and a butcher. The outside really looks great! The most interesting aspect of the interior, though, is that they are using old Pathmark aisle markers throughout...

The part of the aisle marker that would have read "save" is now covered with a Compare Foods logo. Honestly, I think these aisle markers look better with Compare Foods than with the old Pathmark branding!

Interestingly, although there was a Pathmark in Port Chester, the Key Food that acquired it kept the aisle markers. These must be from a different Pathmark. The store is located at 155 Irving Ave, Port Chester.

Photographed February 2017

Snapshot: Shop 'n Save - Connellsville, PA

Today's Snapshot is a supermarket about an hour southeast of Pittsburgh, PA. When I visited the store, it was Ross' Shop 'n Save, a member of the Shop 'n Save cooperative. It also had some great old decor inside, mostly lots of neon.

This Shop 'n Save has since been replaced by Cash Saver, a cost-plus store (they sell groceries at the wholesale cost plus 10% at checkout). Unfortunately, you can see that the classic decor has been replaced on Google Maps. What struck me about the store is how nice the carts looked (even though they were pretty old) in the sunset, and more importantly, just how many of them there were!

The store is located at 119 Memorial Blvd, Connellsville, PA.

Photographed June 2017

Revisit: Aron's - West Orange, NJ

We originally saw Aron's West Orange, a Kosher supermarket, in November 2018 with a Look Inside from a contributor. I recently made it to the store myself, and rounded out our coverage with a few additional pictures.

The outside has not really been changed much. The banner facing Eagle Rock Ave has been removed, leaving only this very small banner facing the parking lot. (If you're coming down Eagle Rock in the other direction, you're out of luck!) For an idea of the layout, the aisles run perpendicular to Eagle Rock. The produce department runs along both sides of the first aisle, with deli, butcher, and seafood on the back wall (in that order), frozen/dairy in the last aisle, and bakery and customer service in the front corner of the store opposite the entrance.

While our contributor's photos were more focused on individual products and displays, I tried to get a better overview of the store. The produce aisle is quite impressive, and includes a large selection of both conventional and organics. However, several places on the shelves (prepared produce, just out of frame to the right and packaged greens, down the aisle on the left) were mostly empty. This was also a problem in the deli department, and some frozen/dairy cases. I could have just come at a bad time, though.

This answers my previous question about the design to the left of the produce sign. It's just decorative!

One of the grocery aisles. Although they're not numbered, there aren't many, I'd say five or so. And not only are they not numbered, they're still not labeled. There is still nothing on any of the aisle markers!

Last aisle with frozen and dairy on the perimeter.

Quick look at seafood along the back wall. (You can see an example of the empty spaces at the far end of the case to the right.) Once again, the address is 629 Eagle Rock Ave. Come back tomorrow for another revisit in West Orange, along with a regularly scheduled post!

Photographed March 2019

TOUR: Ahart's Market - Allentown, PA

Welcome back to the Lehigh Valley! Today we're going back to Allentown, the largest city in the Lehigh Valley. We've seen a few stores here before, but due to the closure of my Flickr account, I'm wrapping up a few stores I photographed a while ago but never actually wrote up for the blog.

Ahart's is part of Great Valu, a small cooperative with stores mainly in the PA area. They use the Supervalu storebrands.

This building started out as a Food Fair supermarket (looking something like this) before being converted to Food Fair's discount-centered banner, Pantry Pride. Unlike the stores in New Jersey, most of which became Mayfair Foodtowns, this one ended up as a Food Lane supermarket owned by Laneco (a department store chain) before being switched to Ahart's around 2000. (We've previously seen the Ahart's in Phillipsburg, NJ, which is now closed.)

I complained plenty about Phillipsburg, but I have to say, this location looked pretty good. The decor is the same, obviously, but this location didn't look quite as dirty or beat-up as Phillipsburg. Produce is in the front left corner, with meat along the left side wall. Dairy lines the back of the store and frozen foods are in the last aisle. I'm drawing a blank on whether there's a service deli, but if there is, it's at the back of aisle 1.

Because the produce department doesn't line a wall like it does in Phillipsburg, we just get "Produce," not "Garden Fresh Produce."

Produce is in the corner to the left in the above picture.

Ahart's appears to have supplemented the original decor with some promotional signage from Great Valu. Otherwise, the decor would be pretty sparse; it doesn't have quite as many frills as we saw in Phillipsburg.

A look down aisle 2 with the "Bake Shop" in the back. There's no bakery here, so that could be packaged baked goods or just the bread section. Unlike other Ahart's stores, Allentown seemed to have a fairly decent international selection here, with a special promotional ad from Goya just like Latinos Supermarket's. This probably had to do with the fact that Supremo had recently opened just under a mile east on Allen Street.

Pretty clean and uncluttered back aisle, although the walls look awfully bare. Compare this to a similar shot of the meat department in Phillipsburg. (The ceilings also appear to be higher here in Allentown.)

Frozen foods in the last aisle. Gotta love the orange juice and waffles under the Ice Cream sign...

This is Food Lane decor, which has been somewhat awkwardly redone for Ahart's.

We can see a similar sign in the Easton Food Market, also a former Food Lane.

Somewhat cluttered front-end, but still not too bad. Allentown is definitely the best of the Ahart's I've visited!

Ahart's Market

1401 W Allen St, Allentown, PA

Open Mon-Sat 7AM-9PM, Sun 7AM-8PM

greatvalu.com
(610) 776-0244
Photographed September 2016