TOUR: ACME Markets - Audubon, NJ

ACME Markets

Opened: late 1970s

Previous Tenants: Penn Fruit (1950s-late 1970s)

Location: 100 E Black Horse Pk, Audubon, NJ

Photographed: January 2021

Any true ACME fan out there will know all about the Audubon location. The store was built as an approximately 23,000 square foot Penn Fruit arched-roof store but was sold to ACME when Penn Fruit went under in the late 1970s, along with a few others which have closed or moved. This one is the last Penn Fruit converted store in business, and has been expanded to roughly 54,000 square feet.

Acme Style first covered the store in 2014, including an impressive photo of the Penn Fruit around its opening. In November 2016, they documented the beginning of a Quality Built renovation here, which of course was finished by my January 2021 visit.

And any regular reader of my blogs will know that I love a good arched-roof store, such as yesterday's. In this one, roughly half the store's space is in flat-roof expansions, but as we'll see there's plenty of reminders of the arched roof inside. We can enter at either end of the front, but the main entrance is on the right to the grand aisle.

We have produce in the front right corner of the store, with bakery/deli in the island facing, and meat/seafood around the outside in the back right corner. Dairy lines the back wall of the store, with frozen foods right up the middle, and pharmacy in the front left corner.

So when we enter the store, we encounter the service bakery counter. Fresh bread and pastries is behind that, with the deli counter at the back of the island.

Looking towards the back wall. We can see that a lot of these fixtures were new in the Quality Built renovation, and the rest were painted black to match. I will say that like Lincroft, the Chalkboard Market-to-Quality Built conversions are really nice because of the ceiling especially.

But I think Quality Built brought some much-needed streamlining to the store's appearance and layout.

Deli at the back of the island. The only part of this decor package I don't love is the framed signs here, as I'd rather have seen something creative with individual letters mounted to the drop ceiling rather than this.

Meat and seafood counter on the back wall. Packaged meats are on either side and the back of the deli island, which is certainly an unusual layout. Perhaps something we're more used to seeing in a Supremo, which uses nearly the same layout, than an ACME.

And now we're heading towards the grocery aisles...

Looks like aisle 1 used to be natural/organic but the store has been reset and ACME no longer separates the natural/organic items in the aisles. Unfortunately, the signage was never taken down. This aisle, as Acme Style mentions, is a little strange because the walls actually go from floor to ceiling, making it completely closed off from the rest of the store.

And here we move into the main sales floor area, with aisle 1 behind the wall to the right.

But once we get to aisle 5, we get the glimpse of the arched roof, which has of course been modified with a flat ceiling across the top of it. Still a very nice feature.

The double-wide aisle Acme Style mentions. This store feels large enough, so there probably wasn't too much concern about loss of selection.

Proudly Serving You Since 1891 across the back of the arch -- a very nice touch! Notice that dairy/cold cuts are on the back wall here instead of meat as we'd typically see.

Aisles 9 and 10 are frozen, going right up the middle of the arch.

What a view!

And looking at the back wall. Dairy continues down the back half of the last aisle.

A note about ACME and dairy: notice the Rosenberger's milk here. That comes from a producer down here in Burlington, NJ and was briefly sold in the northern NJ ACMEs too. They have since switched to Farmland, which comes from Newark. Similarly, the southern NJ/Philadelphia area ACMEs sell fresh bread and rolls from Liscio's bakery in Philadelphia, while the northern NJ/New York City area ACMEs sell fresh bread and rolls from Teixeira's in Newark.

The front half of the last few aisles is pharmacy and HABA. As we see, the ceiling is much lower in this section.

Consequently, the normal-sized pharmacy signage looks enormous here.

Looking back out over the arch, and we can also see that the aisle markers look very large in the little space.

But what a view across the arch! Very nice, and I'm glad that the arched roof interior was preserved.

Don't forget to check out a former competitor right across the street here, and tomorrow, we move on to Westmont for a look at a former supermarket over on Grocery Archaeology along with another ACME here on The Market Report!