TOUR: ACME Markets - Old Bridge, NJ

ACME Markets

Opened: 2015

Previous Tenants: A&P

Location: 3500 US-9, Old Bridge, NJ

Photographed: December 2020

Does this store look a little familiar? It might, and that's because it's one of two stores built in this model by A&P in the mid-90s. The other one, Kenilworth, we toured back in June. At 57,000 square feet, this one is a little smaller than Kenilworth, and it also was renovated to Fresh 1.0 instead of 2.0. Dan Asnis has some great pictures of the store as an A&P and in its closing days here.

ACME has not yet remodeled the store to Quality Built, but they have replaced some fixtures and most importantly, the lighting in this part of the store. If you look here, you can see that A&P had much more focused lighting. Now I was never in this store as an A&P, but judging by the other locations, the problem was that the stores were very attractive but poorly maintained, so those lights would burn out and the stores would always come off as dingy, not high-end. I will say that I think the green Sav-A-Center flooring works better with Fresh 1.0 than 2.0, and it integrates better with either of those than Quality Built.

Floral and a Santander bank branch in the front left corner of the store, with produce lining the left side (basically a mirror image of Kenilworth). Deli and seafood are at the back of the first aisle, with meat lining the rest of the back wall and bakery in the back right corner. Frozen goes up the middle of the store, like Kenilworth, with dairy in the last aisle and pharmacy in the front right corner.

An overview of the deli department in the back corner. Notice how this store never had the cheese island I complained about in Kenilworth. There's very little signage on the walls here, which I assume is because ACME removed the Master Choice signage and the Dietz & Watson signage as they now sell Boar's Head.

If you look carefully, you can also tell that the wall is actually painted tile. I'm not sure I've ever seen that before.

Looking across the back wall with seafood, butcher, and packaged meats. This store, as we can see here, is noticeably smaller and less deluxe than Kenilworth (look at the ceiling, for instance, which is all one height here while Kenilworth has those details over the service departments). The mostly-empty aisle markers seem to be an indication that ACME has recently reset the store -- and oddly enough, ACME seems to reset their stores right before a remodel, not after like many other chains. So does that mean a remodel is now going on at Old Bridge? As great as the Fresh 1.0 decor looks, it's past time for a remodel here.

The grocery aisles could also stand to receive some TLC -- new shelving, flooring, and lighting would be great, but it depends how much ACME wants to invest in the store. Notice that the flooring is clearly wearing down and these old A&P light fixtures are not nearly as effective as the newer ACME-installed fixtures visible over produce to the right.

Frozen is also showing its age, with cases probably original to the store and lighting sorely in need of replacement. That's happened in many other ACMEs, so I wonder why it hasn't here yet. It didn't seem to me that this was a particularly low-volume store in danger of closing, which would be my assumption otherwise.

Those little boxes in the ceiling left over from A&P just aren't cutting it (did they ever?) and it's certainly worse with some of the lights in the cases burnt out.

Back to the meat department on the back wall.

And looking back towards the first aisle. I've never seen an ACME with so little on the aisle markers, so that has to be due to a reset, right?

Nonfoods at this end of the store. As much as I might nitpick about things like the lighting or floor, it's night and day compared to the nearby competition which we'll see in two days. Of course, that store is slated to be replaced with a newly built store so that might prompt a renovation here.

It's rare to see such an A&P-original ACME today. Even Hoboken, which retains the same Fresh 1.0 decor package we see here, has gotten new lighting and fixtures in a few departments.

My complaints and confusion over lack of remodel aside, this is an objectively attractive store which has very clearly been maintained better in its six years so far as an ACME than it ever was as an A&P. On the front-end, we see a different setup from Kenilworth in which HABA is in a few short aisles in front of the pharmacy rather than integrated into the grocery aisles. I assume that's because the shape of the store made it easier to add more things front-to-back instead of side-to-side since it's almost a square.

We do also see one small ACME change here -- Quality Built register lights! But six years later, still no "ACME" addition to the "Thank you for shopping". Anyhow, tomorrow we have two more stores just to the north on route 9 -- an independent grocer that's set up shop in part of the former A&P this store replaced, and a former ACME coincidentally located just across the highway (remember that there was a gap of several decades between that store's closure and this store's opening). So that's one post each on The Independent Edition and Grocery Archaeology -- stay tuned!