TOUR: CTown Supermarkets - New Brunswick, NJ

CTown Supermarkets
Owner: Edward Taveras

Opened: 2000

Previous Tenants: Xtra Savings Supermarket (2000-2017)

Cooperative: Krasdale

Location: 333 Suydam St, New Brunswick, NJ

Photographed: July 2020

At just under 5000 square feet, today's store tour is slightly larger than the other store we're seeing today. It operated for over 15 years as the Xtra Savings Supermarket, which is still the co-branded name, but in 2017 the store also gained a CTown affiliation under the same owners.

It's likely that the store was remodeled around the same time, with a new flooring and some new fixtures. In any event, the interior is looking very good. By the way, there was previously a much larger CTown in downtown New Brunswick for several decades, which rebranded to Bravo in 2011 under the same owners. We'll be touring that store as it is today in a few days.

The first aisle here contains produce in the front 2/3 or so, and meat in the back 1/3. Service deli and butcher line the back wall, with dairy and frozen in aisle 5, the last aisle. As we can see, the produce fixtures and flooring have been recently updated, and the lighting has also been upgraded.

As we can see, not a single square inch has been wasted inside this store. In the above photo, we're looking back up towards the front wall of the store from the second aisle.

An awning runs along the service departments in the back and the customer service counter in the front, which resembles what we've seen in former Mayfair Foodtown stores (though I don't think there's any relation to this store, and I don't think this one was ever a Mayfair Foodtown or a Food Fair).

As we frequently see in these smaller stores, the second aisle is short to accommodate the wider produce department in the front.

The aisle markers -- specifically the distinctive turquoise and maroon color scheme -- look an awful lot like what CTown was using in the 80s and 90s, making me wonder if this was perhaps a CTown under different owners prior to Xtra Savings opened in 2000. We can also see a bit of the awning on the front wall in the distance there.

Frozen and dairy taking up the outside of the last aisle. Notice that these cases seem to be much newer than the store is, again, likely when the store switched over to CTown in 2017.

And a look at the registers -- which, again, look to predate Xtra Savings and are turquoise. It's, of course, possible also that some of those elements were brought in from another store when this one opened in 2000, I don't know for sure that this space was a grocery store before 2000. Anyway, tomorrow is our next stop at a former supermarket up near the Rutgers campus on Grocery Archaeology.