Foodtown of Atlantic Highlands
Owner: Lou Scaduto Jr. / Circus Fresh Foods
Opened: 1977
Previous Tenants: Safeway (early 1960s-late 1960s) > Finast (late 1960s-1977)
Cooperative: Allegiance Retail Services
Location: 3 Bayshore Plaza, Atlantic Highlands, NJ
Photographed: December 2020
We are here in Atlantic Highlands for our second clearly high-volume Jersey Shore Circus Foodtown! Make sure to check out Port Monmouth, our first store, here first. Acme Style covered this store on the possibility it's a former ACME, but it's not -- instead, it's a former Safeway similar to the one we saw on Staten Island a while back. At 33,000 square feet, it's slightly smaller than Port Monmouth but still a substantial supermarket in a ShopRite-free area -- and that's also a large reason why it's succeeded as well as it has.
The grand aisle here takes up about 2/3 of the pitched-roof space, with the grocery aisles mostly in the expansion to the right. The layout of the grand aisle and first few grocery aisles is almost exactly the same as Port Monmouth, just a mirror image. Let's head in and check it out...
Just as beautiful as Port Monmouth for sure, if not nicer. This store is clearly in better repair, and I suspect that has to do with the fact that the median household income in this area is much higher than in Port Monmouth. Prepared foods and deli line the left side of the grand aisle, with produce lining the right.
Great prepared foods. And I'm not just saying that because they looked nice -- this was my lunch stop that day.
The deli contains the decor previously seen in Red Bank -- we can tell the awning or overhang structure is nearly identical. By the way, Red Bank is also an expanded former Safeway-turned-Finast.
Looking back up towards the entrance/exit over produce. We can also see a good overview of the pitch in the roof here. The windows let in a huge amount of light in the grand aisle.
Awesome bakery department at the back of the grand aisle. Very cool bread display here (reduced a bit for coronavirus precautions), set up kind of like a salad bar so you can mix and match your assorted rolls, bagels, and bread loaves.
Seafood and meat service counters are next along the back wall, with packaged meats lining the rest of the back wall. Apologies for this being the only picture of the butcher counter I could get, but there were far too many employees behind and at the counter to get a better shot.
Once again, the decor peters out a little in the rest of the store but the category markers in the same style remain. We can see here the transition between exposed pitched roof and flat drop ceiling.
The first few grocery aisles are in the exposed ceiling area, with the rest being under the drop ceiling.
The original Safeway would've ended where these poles are. The expansion takes up about 11,000 square feet, or about 1/3 of the overall store's size.
Along the back aisle, the back wall slants to accommodate the back property line of the site.
Frozen foods take up the second-to-last aisle and one side of the last aisle, with dairy on the outside wall. Once again, frozen foods look a little dingy compared to the rest of the store...
14 aisles in total.
And once again, my photos of the front end are a little limited by crowding, but we still get the idea.
That wraps up our look at this one-of-a-kind store! Tomorrow we're heading just over to the other end of town for a former store on Grocery Archaeology before we head out to the eastern part of the shore. Stay tuned!
I love your shot of the grand aisle looking back toward the front entrance! The pitched roof and all the natural light coming in through the windows are beautiful.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteWe had a couple of older Price Chopper stores with that roof design as well (I think they are all gone now or turned into other things with enough remodel that you couldn't tell).
ReplyDeleteAlso noting the checkout lights with the arrows to point to where - any guess if those are something they created or ones they may have gotten from elsewhere? I seem to remember one of the discount stores that used those (in their case, it was when they set up two checkouts back to back, so one arrow pointed right the other to the left so you knew which side(s) was open.
One other question - what is the "ShopRite Free area" (or more precisely, how far is it to get to one)?
Just since it always seemed (at least in the parts of NJ I was in) many times another store wasn't that far away, just that people weren't willing to travel that distance.
Oh that's true -- that's a store model I tend to forget about at times. Is this the one you're talking about? https://flic.kr/p/dJ61BL
DeleteSo if that's the one you are thinking of, I want to ask you if two other stores I've photographed are former Price Choppers of that model, which I know little to nothing about. The two stores are 130 Housatonic St, Lee, MA (right up the street from a recently-closed PC) and 5700 VT-100, Londonderry, VT (an otherwise unidentifiable store that could theoretically be in the trade area of PC). If you have any thoughts, I would appreciate it!
As for the register lights, I don't know, but it does look like they are only designed to point towards the single register. Definitely possible that they are from elsewhere though.
Forgot about that former Saratoga store (that you linked), but that is one of them in the style.
DeleteI can't say for certain the other two (and neither shows a street view to look at them).
I would think that the Lee one is unlikely (given the close proximity to the other store, and that later store which I actually was in was still pretty small - so it doesn't make sense, not like they built a new larger one up the street).
The VT one would make sense (as you suggest) being pretty close to other locations (like Manchester), and they have closed quite a few smaller stores in these more outlying locations, but I don't think I ever was in that particular town so no good info.).
For the lights - I am thinking they actually had them in that other store double (kind of like if you took #7 & #8 and put one on top of the other, but with the arrows pointing opposite directions). Just interesting in that you don't normally see that indicator in supermarkets, as the light usually makes it fairly clear which place you should go.
I agree, Lee doesn't feel 100% like a former PC but Londonderry does feel more like it.
DeleteAh, thanks for the clarification, and that would make sense!
There's no ShopRite east of Route 35 between Keyport and Asbury Park, with the exception of West Long Branch.
ReplyDeleteYep, exactly. That's ACME/Foodtown territory. Plus a few other random stores here and there.
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