The Market Report

DECEMBER Sun Sweet Fresh Market is a large convenience store or small grocery store located at 838 6 Ave, Manhattan, NY. It has a large selection of prepared foods with service counters -- enough selection that just about anyone would find something they like! The photo is deceptive since it's actually much larger than it appears from the outside. Similar stores are popping up all around New York City. I chose this one because it has more of a grocery selection than many others do. Google street view, 2014.

The Hudson Valley was one of the places where Grand Union was strongest. This store in Saugerties, NY made it to the end, and closed in the bankruptcy of 2001. It was taken over by C&S Wholesale Grocers and operated for a brief time as a Grand Union Family Market before closing. The Grand Union was all the way on the right of this mall, where the Big Lots is now. Big Lots moved in after Family Markets left. Just up the street from this store is the Price Chopper in Saugerties.

...but obviously the folks at Food Bazaar didn't quite get the message. The ingredients, according to this package, are: ENRICHED FLOUR WHEAT FLOUR BARLEY FLOUR NACH IRNON HAMIN MONITRATE RIBORAMM WATER SUGAR YEAST BUTTER (PARTIALLY HYDROGENATED SOYBEAM AND COTTONSEED OIL WATER PART WHYDROGENATED SOUBEAN AND COTTONSEED OIL CONTAINS LESS 2% HERO OWING NONA MILK DEXTROSE CORN ...and it may contain fish. Yum! This list of orthographical oddities has been replaced with simply "butter croissant" on some newer packages.

DECEMBER Pathmark has savings all over! 1982 Pathmark commercial from Video Archaeology on Youtube.

Ever heard of Elizabethtown, NY? Probably not. A town of just over 1300 people, it's situated in the far-upstate Adirondack region of New York State. It's just off of the New York Thruway. I stopped for lunch at a pizzeria in town. I was not aware at the time that there was a Tops in a former Grand Union just down the street from where I ate. However, upon entering Bub's Pizza & Deli , I quickly noticed the old pictures of Elizabethtown on the walls. Among the pictures were shots of a street-front Grand Union and A&P. When I left the restaurant, it didn't take long to determine where the stores were. Turns out Bub's was actually the A&P and the GU was two doors down! Different kind of before-and-after! Clearly the facade has changed, and it looks like the building has been expanded to the left. Definitely click on the old pictures to zoom in. You have to see all the details! So GU and A&P (both defunct now, of course) were separated on...

We're back in Gramercy Park , Manhattan for a quick look at a D'Agostino Supermarket that is clearly past its prime... ... way  past its prime. It's obvious that this store was the coolest, most modern thing around when it opened, but that was probably at least 20 years ago. (Notice that the green and red stripes are actually 3-D strips set a few inches in front of the black panel.) A quick look at the frozen foods aisle, the last aisle in the store. It's pretty closely representative of the entire store. Somewhat cool, somewhat dingy, not bad but not great either. At least my cashier was very friendly.

DECEMBER For today's Post of the Month, we're heading back to Elizabeth, NJ for an appropriately quick look at the Quick Food & Deli store at 283 Westfield Ave. Hard to describe exactly what this store is, having never been here. The outside claims they have groceries, meat, deli, dairy, and paper goods. Pretty full-service for a bodega! Google street view, 2016.

Fairway is a strange chain. I visited their location in Woodland Park, NJ when it first opened and was not impressed. I found the selection mediocre and prices outrageous, and the prepared foods were only decent. On the other hand, I've visited two in Manhattan, both of which I liked a lot more. One, in Harlem, I visited summer 2016, and you can see my pictures here . This location, in Chelsea, most directly competes with the Ideal Marketplace we saw on Monday. This Fairway is a pretty cool store, but by far its coolest feature is the cart return. Obviously, being on a busy city street in Manhattan, they can't exactly store carts on the sidewalk outside. So what do you do? Ingenious! Because you can get at the carts from the side, you can pull them out effectively, but you can also store a good long line of them under this produce case. Kudos to the designers of this feature!

We've discussed NSA Supermarkets and America's Food Basket before, so here's one of AFB's two stores in Manhattan, NY, in the fairly upscale neighborhood of Chelsea. This Ideal Marketplace was previously branded an NSA Supermarket, and it's a very modern store. Here's a tip: if you're going to open a supermarket, don't put a dark green sign on a black background. What's the name of this store? Oh, you can't tell? Let's go a little closer... Better? Not really. Now I guess most people who shop in this store already know about it and walk or take public transportation, so they don't need to catch the eye of a tourist passing by. But come on, can't you just put the word Ideal  in white? I spotted this sign with the NSA logo still on it in the dairy section. Can anyone understand it and give me a translation? From this single mediocre photo, we can see the interior is very upscale and modern. It's a beautiful store ...

  DECEMBER Welcome to a new feature here at NJ Supermarkets! Each Saturday, I'll have a Something of the Month post. This is just a quick look at something I found interesting, and isn't content I've created. It also means there's something new every day except Sunday... Monday: Store tour here Tuesday: Facebook post Wednesday: Snapshot here Thursday: Preview of next week's store tour on Facebook Friday: Snapshot here Saturday: Post of the Month here And I have a new feature for Sunday coming soon! This week, we're taking a look at a former supermarket, a Supermarkets General-owned ShopRite-turned-Pathmark at 6 South Ave E in Cranford, NJ. At some point in the 1980s (?) the Pathmark moved down the street to 10 South Ave, Garwood, NJ, which later became The Food Emporium and Superfresh. This older location became a Drug Fair which in turn was bought by Dollar General when Drug Fair went under. Google street view, 2016.

I don't know why people hate CTown so much. I think most of it is CTown's historical reputation, but I've found every CTown I've visited to be really good. Clean, well-stocked, bright, and good prices. This one was no exception... Alphabet City is a neighborhood of Manhattan, just southeast of Stuyvesant Town . Historically Alphabet City was one of the worst neighborhoods of the City, but as always, gentrification is spreading through. Clearly gentrification has its benefits and disadvantages, but I was actually very happy to find this CTown a holdover from pre-gentrification Alphabet City. That means very Latin selections, Spanish-speaking employees, great produce, and low prices. There's something about a CTown that makes you feel welcome as soon as you walk in. I don't know what it is, and I doubt it's a conscious effort among all of the CTown owners, but I just immediately feel comfortable in a CTown, the way Associated Supermarkets feel somewh...

In New York City, there are two chains that buy wholesale from Wakefern (ShopRite): Morton Williams and Gristedes. (D'Agostino, which shares an owner with Gristedes, is an Allegiance member and gets the Foodtown storebrand.) Morton Williams is an independent, wannabe-gourmet chain that ends up being just expensive. Morton Williams was previously an Associated Food Stores (now Associated Supermarket Group) operator that split around 2010, renaming all of their Associated Supermarkets Morton Williams Supermarkets . This store, in the ritzy Gramercy Park neighborhood of Manhattan, NYC, feels like an Associated frozen in time since the 1980s, complete with neon signage inside and out, but with the prices of a Kings from here in the suburbs. To tell the truth, I can't believe Morton Williams still manages to hang on.

Almost a year ago, in January 2017 , I noticed that when Key Food launched its Superfresh website, it listed one unidentifiable store. The only possibility for that location, I wrote, was " if SF plans to open a new store in the former  A Seabra Foods  in Roselle, which is  approximately  where that icon is." Guess what? When I visited a relative's house in Elizabeth on Saturday night around 4PM, I noticed a Superfresh circular. I thought maybe Irvington, but no! Less than an hour later, I was at the store. It's still in progress, hence the dumpster in the parking lot. It was filled with lots of garbage and some renovation debris, like these old ceiling tiles! Before we head in, here's some history on the store. It was built in the 1950s as a Food Fair with the style of that time: small parking lot in front, large parking lot in the rear. What makes this a particularly interesting example is that the stores are actually arranged in a circle ar...