Met Foodmarkets
Owner: Hamlet Reynoso
Opened: 2002
Previous Tenants: Foodtown (1950s-late 1970s) > CTown
Cooperative: Associated Supermarket Group
Location: 514 Ferry Street, Newark, NJ
Photographed: January 7, 2026
Before we begin, just a heads up: this was originally posted in May 2021, but was rewritten with new photos in March 2026. Now for the post! Our next Newark store tour, and the only major supermarket in the Ironbound that's not a Seabra Foods or a Seabra's Market, is this Met Foodmarket on Ferry Street just over half a mile east of yesterday's Seabra. This 9600 square foot store was expanded from an original 7900 square feet, and the expansion makes up the first aisle, to the far left of the store.
You enter to the double-wide produce aisle with dairy in the expansion to the left.
The fixtures and decor are in that murky range where they're neither old nor new, so it's hard to place them other than an estimate that they probably date back to the store's opening in 2002. This was a supermarket for at least several decades before that, opening around the 1950s as a Foodtown and then becoming a CTown at some point after the late 1970s.
This is the only service counter in the store.
The first grocery aisle extends beyond where the butcher-deli wall is. You can see the store was built at some odd angles, with the wall to the left (and consequently, the grocery aisles) being at about a 45-degree angle to the front wall. Frozen starts here in the first aisle, and continues along the back wall. But some frozen cases are out of commission these days: you can see the freezers filled with diapers below.
The grocery aisles are also at an angle, as I mentioned. Look at the shelving compared to the ceiling tiles, which run at exactly the angle of the front wall of the store.
Met Foods does not seem to be... how do I put this gently... the supermarket of choice in the Ironbound. Maybe I was just here at a bad time, but it was a little eerie how deserted the store was in such a busy neighborhood.
Angled aisles create some odd corners in the last aisle, which is nonfoods, soda, and bread. Water continues into the front corner next to the customer service counter.
Three registers on the front-end, but we can see there aren't really many people here, before we head out of this store. Up next we're heading towards southwestern Newark (West Side) to tour what might just be the city's least interesting supermarket!
This post was rewritten on March 30, 2026 with new photos.
Well, at least aluminum foil doesn't spoil (given that the photos are what, a bit over 3 years after the last of A&P).
ReplyDeleteMaybe that adds to what you said on the store seeming deserted...?
That's true. And I think it's kind of a chicken and egg situation... nobody shops at the store, so the products sit around for too long. So the products aren't fresh, so nobody shops at the store.
DeleteIt's still a pretty nice and clean store though, it just would be nice for it to have a little more life to it.