TOUR: Tropical Supermarket - North Brunswick, NJ

Tropical Supermarket

Owner: Ricardo Hernandez

Opened: 2012

Previous Tenants: Bravo Supermarkets

Cooperative: Key Food Stores

Location: 959 Livingston Ave

Photographed: July 2020

Time for our next Tropical Supermarket! This 8400 square foot is actually the secondary anchor to this strip, which has a 13,500 square foot anchor currently occupied by CVS. It's possible that was originally a grocery store, although today this store is the grocery tenant in the strip. Possibly Foodtown was in the CVS space, which had a pretty large presence in the greater New Brunswick area.

The store is very small and seems to be on the older side. The Bravo that predated this Tropical Supermarket probably was in this spot for a good decade at least before Tropical took over. Although this store is on the smaller side, and a bit older, it's still well-run and well-maintained.

Deli and a large butcher line the left side of the first aisle, with produce on the right side. Packaged meats line the back wall, with frozen and dairy in the last aisle.

By the way, the signage on the top of the butcher counter is for meat plans, which had been temporarily suspended for coronavirus at the time of my visit. So the signage was temporarily covered up.

A very impressive produce selection packed into a very small space, just like South River.

Meats lining the back wall. Notice the tiny bit of old CTown (or Bravo) decor peeking out from the top of the side wall of the store at the far end. We saw this decor package in its entirety in Orange, among other stores.

We're moving into the first grocery aisle, which is clean and nicely stocked. But I'm not entirely sure what's going on with that orange sign for the La Fe Panela. Kind of makes me want to start singing, ♫ deck the halls with round Panela, fe la fe la fe, la fe la la... ♫

The aisles get pretty narrow as we see some of the stocking carts. Notice here that the decor I mentioned earlier is not present on the back wall, but the aisle markers are consistent with that decor package.

Dairy and frozen line the last aisle.

Although the refrigerator cases are quite old, the freezer cases look to have been updated. And the registers are also rather old, although it's hard to tell whether they have just been here for a long time or whether they were brought in secondhand to a store that opened more recently.

That wraps up our tour in this small store! I mentioned the anchor may have originally been a Foodtown, and tomorrow, we're going to take a look at a Foodtown (which has since been rebranded) just 3/4 of a mile to the northeast over the border into New Brunswick. Come back tomorrow to check it out!