The Market Report

Trader Joe's Opened: unknown Previous Tenants:  unknown Location:  404 NJ-17 N, Paramus, NJ Photographed: November 2019 Trader Joe's is known for upscale retailing with a sense of humor. Unfortunately, so is their competitor Stew Leonard's , which is four times the size of this 20,000 square foot store, much better at nearly everything than Trader Joe's, and just 0.4 miles away. I find Trader Joe's completely uninteresting because all of their stores are exactly the same. However, we will be touring one of their New Jersey locations in a while. Head over to The Independent Edition tomorrow to check out an under-construction produce market, our last store in Paramus!

ShopRite of Emerson Owner: Inserra Supermarkets Opened:  1981 Previous Tenants:  Valley Fair department store Cooperative:  Wakefern Food Corp. Location:  425 Old Hook Rd, Emerson, NJ Photographed:  December 2020 Our next store tour is this ShopRite here in Emerson! It opened in 1981 in a former Valley Fair department store as a replacement for the Westwood location . It was remodeled around 2010 (outside at least, I'm assuming the interior remodel was completed around the same time). Take a look at what the exterior used to look like here .  Despite its updates, the 53,000 square foot store feels sorely outdated because of its facility. Many of the fixtures seem to not have been updated since the store opened in 1981, the ceilings are very low, and the layout is just plain weird. An entrance at the right side of the store takes us into the pharmacy, with a Snack Center to the right on the front wall. Soda and water line the first aisle, with deli tucked away in the back of the fi

LIDL Opened: 2020 Previous Tenants:  A&P > ACME Markets Location:  199 Kinderkamack Rd, Park Ridge, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 It's time for our first LIDL store tour! LIDL entered the United States in 2017 and has been moving into quite a few vacant supermarket spaces. It's a little bit like ALDI, except completely unappealing and much worse. Ahem, journalistic integrity tells me I should actually describe the chain so I'm going to go with "larger format stores than ALDI, a weaker private label program, in-store bakeries, and a larger selection of nonfoods." Anyway, I didn't even realize this store had been taken over by LIDL when I visited; it was a centennial model A&P that had been extensively remodeled and expanded over the years by A&P, then taken over by ACME in 2015 and closed three years later. Inside and outside (at least in the front), there's absolutely nothing left over from either of the former tenants. There's actually s

ShopRite of Hillsdale Owner: Inserra Supermarkets Opened: 1979 Previous Tenants:  Valley Fair department store Cooperative:  Wakefern Food Corp. Location:  372 Broadway, Hillsdale, NJ Photographed:  December 2020 We previously saw the Kings here in Hillsdale . That store started out in the 1960s as a Stop & Shop, with this store probably opening the following decade. The best part is... the classic sign remains! Despite this, the interior of the store has been totally remodeled recently. The store is set up with one row of parking between the front wall and the street, then larger parking lots at either end. I assume this is intentional, but the entrance on the right here brings you in to floral and the entrance at the far end, which has a sign that says Pharmacy, brings you in to pharmacy. Let's start on this end... Floral is in the front corner here, with produce taking up the rest of the first aisle. Seafood and meat line the back wall, with deli in the back left corner. F