We're starting off with three SuperFresh stores today!
Belleville
Beginning with our friend Super Food Fresh World, I mean Super World Food Fresh, I mean Fresh World Super Food, I mean SuperFresh Food World in Belleville. Just a quick look after our last stop by in
January for daytime exterior pictures.
As I mentioned in January, looking very good except for the stupid logo. Anyway...
Roselle
Reusing my picture of the exterior from March above for the first shot of the store. And although I took the following interior pictures in late May, they may as well have been from March. Absolutely nothing has changed since then, or at least hadn't by the end of May. (
Here's my March photos.)
The store interior looks exactly the same as it did then. No construction at all, as far as I could tell. And furthermore, if you look carefully to the left, you'll see that not only is there still water pooled on the floor, it's still bright behind the tarps, which means the roof still has not been rebuilt. I suppose it's possible that there is an indication that some of the roof debris has been removed, since there appears to be more sunlight coming in than there was in March -- but that could also be the position of the sun in the sky, cloud cover that day, or anything else.
I'm not sure what the holdup here has been -- again, I assume the store does in fact genuinely plan to reopen since it's not available for lease, and it's also still being listed on the weekly circular for Linden every week (as temporarily closed). So we will just have to wait, I suppose.
Here's another shot of the deli area. Again, the ceiling has been removed here, presumably for electrical work for the other tenants. I will update again when I have more information!
Clifton
We do have some signage troubles on the exterior of the Clifton SuperFresh (Supermarket SuperFresh Supermarket of Clifton, anybody? And the pharmacy department is gone) but the store otherwise is looking really good. To review some history here, this store was built as a Pathmark, and split in half in Pathmark's bankruptcy between
Ideal Marketplace and a gym. (For anyone who cares, I'm not sure why but Ideal removed the word Marketplace and replaced it with the black word Supermarket as we see above shortly before they switched to SuperFresh.)
SuperFresh came along in the summer of 2019, and I don't believe the ownership changed. At some point around late 2021 or early 2022, the store was sold, and it appears to have been sold to the owners of the
SuperFresh in Passaic.
The store was reset and received a light renovation, and I must say, it's looking quite good inside. Here's an overview of the grand aisle. Most of what we see was new when Ideal opened in 2017 anyway, so it wasn't worth it to do too much work. One big change is that the new owners have added an island in the front for fresh cut produce, salads, juices, smoothies, and the like. The cafe is behind this. I'm unclear exactly what was here before (were a few registers removed for this?), but it's quite large.
I was wondering what would happen to the store's very large selection of organic produce, which used to be at the back of the produce department. Fear not, the organic produce department is fully intact, but moved to the front of the produce department on the front wall.
The back of the grand aisle has been changed pretty significantly, with many of the features added and then closed early on (like the tortilla maker) completely removed. The hot food department has been changed to Dulce's Kitchen, the same brand as the Passaic SuperFresh's kitchen department.
Kitchen before.Behind the hot food bar, the
former bakery is now the deli, and the former deli is now a seafood counter. As you may recall, the former owners had a seafood counter on the back wall, but closed it.
Nice branding with the new signage that's then carried over onto the digital screens and other department signage.
Meat freezers from the back have been moved into this part of the grand aisle. The baked goods are now split between the cafe (for desserts like cake and pudding) and the self-service refrigerators behind me in the above picture.
New signage at the butcher counter, which remains where it was. Changes on the back wall, though...
The indentation on the back wall for the self-service meat cases and service seafood has been removed and a wall has been built across this whole section, effectively reducing the footprint of the sales floor (although only by a very small amount). This is a more traditional layout, so it's not surprising they chose to remove the indentation.
Grocery aisles are looking really good, with nicely stocked shelves and clean floors. The aisle markers remain from Ideal, just with SuperFresh stickers.
New endcaps, though, featuring these new digital sale display screens.
As far as I could tell, these meat refrigerators are brand new and not moved from elsewhere in the store. Note the individual heating units added to the ceiling in this section. Why do you suppose that is? Typically we see that in older buildings whose heating systems may not be the greatest, but this is a 90s-era Pathmark.
This is your spot to buy oatmeal, though, that's for sure.
No changes in the dairy/frozen department. Frozen takes up both sides of aisle 8.
And wrapping up with a shot of the former pharmacy, now converted to self-service HABA and an expansion of the dairy area. You can clearly see where the pharmacy signage was, but otherwise the department isn't that noticeable. They just need to remove the sign on the outside! That wraps up our SuperFresh updates, but there's more to see today:
And we've got more updates coming tomorrow!
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