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TOUR: ACME Markets - Allendale, NJ

ACME Markets
Opened: 2015
Previous Tenants: A&P
Location: 45 De Mercurio Dr, Allendale, NJ
Photographed: December 2020
Time for another Bergen County ACME that Acme Style also covered! See their coverage here, and our look at the former A&P just to the right of this store here. Clearly once a prime A&P, I do think ACME has let this store slip more than their other acquired stores, perhaps because, as Acme Style mentions, it appears to be a very low-volume store. It did seem the store was busier than at the time of their visit, but I visited this store just about an hour after being at Mahwah, which was absolutely packed while this one was just a little busy.
The 38,000 square foot store is also rather small for its age, although that's understandable given the downtown location. As we'll see, some parts of the store are plenty spacious while some are very cramped.
Heading in, we have produce in the front corner with Starbucks on the front wall just to the left inside the entrance. Deli lines the left side of the grand aisle, with natural foods (previously the liquor department) in the back right corner. Seafood, meat, and bakery line the back wall, with dairy/frozen at the left side of the store with pharmacy on the front wall.
Produce department with basically no upgrades other than the lighting, which went into most of the converted stores. The decor we see here is a fully intact Fresh 2.0, which is nice to see for preservation's sake but I'd sure like to see some Quality Built up on those walls!
Starbucks and customer service on the front wall next to the entrance. Floral faces in the deli island, with the rest of deli lining the island backing up to the grocery aisles.
As much as I love to see all these A&P features, again, I wish ACME was putting more money into this store. While I find the ACMEs in northern New Jersey to be very well-maintained, this one felt slightly dingier and less clean. It's still in pretty good shape, though.
Natural foods in the former liquor department at the back of the grand aisle. Unfortunately, ACME has not installed any signage whatsoever in this area. The former refrigerated cases for liquor are now holding natural beverages, lots of iced tea, and some cases of bottled water in the back...
Looking up towards the front wall of the store.
Seafood is up next along the back wall. The tile around the department and on the back wall is a very nice touch.
This section is very spacious, but the grocery aisles are somewhat narrow. Some of them seem to be different widths, as we'll see shortly.
All the grocery shelving is left over from A&P.
As Acme Style points out, this bakery department would've been at one time in the back corner of the store, where A&P frequently put their bakeries. Now, because of an expansion out this side, it's about 2/3 of the way down the back wall.
I'm assuming ACME reset the store, because that's the flooring A&P used for health and beauty items. Not chocolate and, uh, magazines.
Closeup of the aisle marker and pharmacy sign, which also gives us a good idea of how narrow this particular aisle is.
Packaged bakery and dairy on the back wall of the store. Frozen takes up an aisle and a half at the end here, with dairy on the outside wall of the last aisle and continuing onto the front wall of the store.
Freezer cases probably dating back to the Fresh 2.0 remodel.
One side of frozen and one side of dairy in the last aisle. Dairy continues onto the front wall of the store, with the pharmacy next along the front end.
And for a look at the front-end, which still doesn't even have an ACME sticker...
But this store did have self-checkout and plenty of full-service registers open, which is a good thing. I hope a renovation comes soon here as this store is really starting to show its age, but it still looks pretty good as it is. We saw this store's competition to the north, and up next we're going to check out its competition to the south, with our next stop over on The Independent Edition tomorrow!

Comments

  1. Any indication (since you mention resetting the store) if the shelves themselves were moved? Given the difference in aisle widths, might they (or maybe even A&P at some point) have been trying to make more popular aisles wider and those less popular (like the current seasonal/stationery, unlikely to be as crowded as most, save the day before a holiday when everyone is getting last minute cards) narrower?

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    1. Excellent point. I didn't see any evidence of that, though. In the main grocery aisles, the floor tiling is solid white and doesn't have any marks that may suggest the aisles were moved. In the nonfoods (or what used to be nonfoods) aisles, the blue squares are perfectly centered in the aisles, suggesting that the aisles have not been moved. I do think that all of the narrow aisles are in the area A&P would've expanded into in the Fresh remodel, so it's likely A&P was taking the approach you describe to try to fit as much merchandise in the expanded area as possible, while keeping the rest of the store intact. It seems the expansion didn't do much to the layout of the existing store, such as the bakery not moving despite no longer being in the back corner, or the service departments remaining in the same place as the Futurestore layout.

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  2. I agree that it's always a bit unfortunate when a new owner doesn't invest in a store by remodeling it, but on the flip side of the token, I also very much agree that for preservation and retail fan purposes, it's great to see this old package staying intact for so long!

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    1. For sure! And this one isn't even all that old (somewhere between 2005 and 2010 in this store), but ACME has sped up the whole remodel timeline because they've redone so many when they took them over. If A&P had stuck around, this store wouldn't need to be renovated for much, much longer.

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