Stop & Shop
Opened: 1990s
Opened: 1990s
Previous Tenants: Edwards Super Food Stores
Location: 1049 US-1, Edison, NJ
Photographed: July 2020
Today's store tour is the obligatory I-was-driving-by-a-Stop & Shop-and-had-to-stop tour. Actually, this store is fairly interesting, as Stop & Shops go. The 58,000 square foot store actually still has its Super Stop & Shop decor inside, as we'll see. This is certainly the more boring of the two Stop & Shop locations in Edison, with the Inman Avenue location in North Edison being a more recently renovated former Grand Union.
The interior still has its Edwards flooring (I believe, although I'd honestly never been inside an Edwards) but late 90s/early 00s Super Stop & Shop decor.
Floral and produce in the first aisle, with deli/prepared foods and meat on the back wall; dairy/frozen at the far end; and bakery in the front left corner. This store does not have a pharmacy.
Cheese island with its beautiful hanging structure intact! Deli and prepared foods are on the back wall.
You can see where the service seafood counter, now long gone, was located to the left.
Moving into the grocery aisles, there isn't all that much to see. Customer service is on the front wall...
Back over into the grocery aisles. I assume the shelving and flooring are left over from Edwards, because the store couldn't have been more than a few years old when it was switched to Stop & Shop.
What appears to have been a service butcher counter is about halfway across the back wall.
Like so many of these Super Stop & Shop locations, this one has aisles and aisles of general merchandise. It feels like the space is very poorly used here, since the store isn't even that big (58,000 square feet is still 20,000 square feet smaller than the ShopRite of Milford, CT, which is not one square inch too big).
I do enjoy the large nonfood selection but I think in this store it's much more of a space-filler than it is an actual attempt at broadening selection.
Here we can see the left-side entrance, which takes you to what normally would be the pharmacy but here is the bakery. Health and beauty items take up three aisles across from it...
Up next is frozen foods in the second-to-last aisle and one side of the last aisle.
These cases look much newer than the rest of the store (both decor and fixtures).
And the bakery takes up the front corner of the store.
Notice that, since there's no pharmacy, the bakery is wider and, instead of continuing a little up the outside wall, dairy extends all the way to the front wall.
Looking out towards the front-end.
I like the open ceiling in this store, though. This store format works so much better with the open, airy feeling of the open ceiling instead of the drop ceiling.
I'm pretty sure those are the Edwards checkout lane markers still intact. And at the exit, we see a classic Super Stop & Shop sign thanking us for shopping, along with what I'm assuming is an Edwards clock (since the color scheme and font match the register lights).
That's all for this store! Our next stop is another Asian supermarket along US-1. Head over to The Independent Edition to tour it tomorrow!
Those lane markers were used at Grand Union conversions also, which makes me think they're S&S specific or were used at Edwards too.
ReplyDeleteI'm about 99.9% sure the register lights are not left over from Edwards. Stop&Shop put them in along with the green register counters. I do remember being so disappointed when S&S swapped out Edward's much nicer décor for the lame signage we see here. Really surprised this store has never been updated to a newer décor package.
ReplyDeleteI also remember seeing those register markers (and the matching green with red aisle signs) in other Stop & Shop locations that weren't Edwards areas (like in MA), so they must be a S&S design. Possibly playing off the older traffic light with the red & green?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I always presumed that was the theme they were going for. There is a store in Whiting NJ that looks like they're using most of this same decor but very old aisle markers. The aisle signs I think are from Edwards but I'm not sure.
DeleteThe store does look like it could use a little love, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a sucker for old décor...
ReplyDeleteI don’t think those clocks were Edwards exclusives; we installed one of those on my store walls when we converted from Grand Union back in 2001. Then again, I’ve been wrong before.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I was wrong about the Edwards remnants here (as everyone has pointed out). I am now remembering that I've seen those green checkout lane markers in Massachusetts stores, which of course were never Edwards, along with the Grand Union conversions as mentioned above.
ReplyDeleteThis store actually opened as a Stop & Shop, although it was originally going to be Edwards. I remember the building actually sat vacant for a good while after being built. Not sure what caused the delay, maybe something to do with the Metuchen store that it ultimately replaced?
ReplyDeleteOh, no kidding. Thanks!
DeleteI'm the "Unknown" poster you replied through... looking through old newspaper articles, this store opened in the fall of 2001, replacing the Metuchen store which only spent about a year as S&S. That was a small store not unlike Highland Park and Westfield.
DeleteIt also appears that the delay I spoke of was due to cleanup of contaminated soil on the site.
DeleteAh, thanks!
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