TOUR: ShopRite - Ramsey, NJ

ShopRite of Ramsey

Owner: Inserra Supermarkets

Opened: 1990s

Previous Tenants: none

Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.

Location: 2 Interstate Shopping Ctr, Ramsey, NJ

Photographed: December 2020

Yesterday's ACME just a few minutes to the north in Mahwah was crowded, but pleasant. Unfortunately the ShopRite here in Ramsey was packed at the time of my visit (right before the recent snow storm), but the experience was extremely hectic as the store is not laid out particularly well and is not very spacious, despite being a whopping 68,000 square feet.

It appears the section to the far right, which makes up the frozen and dairy departments, was an expansion.

It's also strange that although the store's interior has been remodeled in the past 5 years or so, the exterior signage around the building and on the monument sign for the mall has not been updated. For an idea of how the store is set up, the main road (NJ-17) runs behind the store. It's very hard to get into and out of, and the mall it's in also has a DSW, Bed Bath & Beyond, TJ Maxx, Michaels, Petco, Old Navy, and several other big-box stores with way too little parking. Not an ideal setup, but clearly a popular one!

I don't know how much longer these logos are going to be up, since the chain officially changed in 2002, and there aren't that many stores out there left with the old logo up. Let's head in!

The layout is a lot like New City -- we enter to a grocery aisle, then make a sharp left past bakery on the front wall into the grand aisle on the far left side of the store. Prepared foods, deli, and seafood are in an island facing the grand aisle, making it feel a little like a Pathmark. The produce department extends farther back than the rest of the store, with the cheese counter in the pass-through to the main store. The back wall then has sushi and meat, with dairy and frozen at the far end and floral in the front right corner. Pharmacy and customer service, like New City, are in islands on the front end.

Awesome decor from the folks at Broden Design. It seems that when the decor was redone (and that's about the time the former Pathmark nearby was replaced), the layout was not changed.

Produce on the left side of the grand aisle, with deli and seafood on the right side. Prepared foods face the front of the store.

The pass-through to grocery is where the oval sign is on the wall all the way to the left. You can see how the produce department then goes all the way to the back wall of the store, with no backroom space behind it.

Very nice cheese counter in the pass-through, which as you'll notice has a lower ceiling.

Sushi, then meat along the back wall (and here you can see how crowded the store got). I'm assuming this sushi counter was previously the meat service counter, which has been moved down the back wall.

Pharmacy and beautiful HABA aisles in the first few grocery aisles. Customer service is also in one of the islands on the front end.

The "Poultry" sign on the back wall is actually from the decor package before the one we saw in the grand aisle, but still a relatively new one, so that combined with the crowds in this store makes me think this is a top location for the chain.

I'm assuming the expansion starts somewhere around here. Dairy (with the older decor too, I believe) begins on the back wall and then takes up the last aisle. Frozen takes up two aisles before it...

These frozen cases look pretty new. The white strips on the top and bottom make me think that maybe they're just updated older cases, though.

One of the things that the Village ShopRites used to have a real problem with was clutter in the aisles. They'd pack each aisle with cardboard displays like these making them very hard to maneuver, but in the past few years, they've eliminated almost all the clutter. This store, on the other hand, was full of clutter. Inserra could take a tip from Village and streamline the stores a little bit.

I like the bold dairy decor, actually, and I definitely like the updated cases with doors.

The front corner of the store has chips, the ShopRite from Home office, and the floral department. I'd like to take a second to encourage every single reader of The Market Report who lives within a few hours of a ShopRite to go out and buy the new Bowl & Basket (storebrand) kettle potato chips. They are extremely good. And there's no excuse for not trying them unless you live in Europe or Asia or Antarctica or are perhaps currently on a spaceship. Then you are exempt.

A look at the very crowded front-end before we head out. It seems this area is very densely populated, and although there is a lot of competition, they all seem to be very popular, with the ACME we saw yesterday very crowded and our next stop busy with plenty of customers, too. We'll be touring the former Pathmark nearby tomorrow on The Independent Edition!