TOUR: ShopRite - Olney, Philadelphia, PA

ShopRite of Front & Olney
Owner: Larry Collins

Opened: 1988

Previous Tenants: none

Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.

Location: 101 E Olney Ave, Olney, Philadelphia, PA

Photographed: July 2021

We are here to tour the largest supermarket in the Lawncrest-Olney area. At just under 70,000 square feet, this sprawling ShopRite is one of the anchors of the One & Olney (ha) Shopping Center. We're just about half a mile as the crow flies from Wilson's Meats, but more like 8/10 of a mile on the street. This store opened in 1988 and expanded into a neighboring Rite Aid around 2000.

We enter on the far left side of the storefront to floral, produce, prepared foods, and some of the bakery department in the expansion. The bakery service counter and deli are all that's left of the original grand aisle, while what I assume was previously produce is now an odd space for mostly snacks and beverages. Meat and seafood line the back wall, with dairy on the far right side of the store in the last aisle and frozen on the front wall. Pharmacy and customer service are at the front of the first grocery aisle. It's not a terrible layout, but it's very obvious it was modified after the store opened. As we'll see, the store seems quite pleasant to shop in but not the most impressive store we've ever seen.

The expansion area is quite attractive, though. We enter to these packaged bakery items with the service bakery counter just out of frame to the right in the main supermarket building. Straight ahead is prepared foods and the cafe, with produce and floral to our left.

I was not having the best of luck when attempting to photograph the produce department. First we have a tortilla rack and then we have a blurry shot of the back...

...but I got it on the third try. In the below photo, we're looking at the left side of the supermarket with floral on the front wall (to my left below), and prepared foods/cafe on the back wall (to my right below).

As we move into the main supermarket, we can immediately tell we're in the older part of the supermarket. It's not in bad shape at all, but the ceiling is much lower (in fact, it's strangely low for most of the supermarket), and the layout feels very strange.

The bakery originally would've faced the entrance, but now kind of faces off towards the checkouts. Deli is opposite the original grand aisle, with packaged deli between them. I assume these counters have not been modified or moved since the store was built, because I find it hard to believe you'd build a store like this. I think it's more likely that the owners simply moved produce out of this area into the new expansion area and left the rest.

And, of course, this is where I assume produce originally was, behind the bakery and deli counters. This is all kind of dead space now, until you get to aisles A through F at the back. Not sure if that area was produce too -- that feels less accidental than the area in front of it.

Plus, in the above photo, check out that hanging lighting! That's gotta be left over from when this was produce, right? Why do you think more grocery aisles weren't installed in this area instead of these random displays? Cost?

Now we get into snacks and beverages in the back of the store.

These aisles, A through F, are labeled with letters, while the aisles in the main grocery section are numbered.

Looking up towards the front of aisle A. The bakery department is on the other side of the wall we see straight ahead that says "life is short, eat good food."

Now looking across the back of the store. We see seafood and meat on the back wall to the left. The first few grocery aisles are HABA and nonfoods, with pharmacy and customer service on the back of the deli island.

I know a lot of ShopRite pharmacies, including many in Philadelphia, have closed. I'm not sure if this one has, or if it had at the time of my visit.

Customer service pictured above. The HABA aisles have green flooring... one of several flooring choices in the store that we might call interesting. The flooring in the expansion is quite attractive.

There's another aisle on the back of the store, as we see above. The meat department is on the other side of this shelving.

I don't remember seeing a service butcher counter here but I'm not entirely sure.

Dairy is up next in the back corner, then running down both sides of the last aisle.

I wouldn't be surprised if these fixtures were original to the store's opening in 1988. They were definitely painted at some point, but they don't look too new.

And as we get to the front of the store, we find purple frozen foods on the front wall. There is one aisle on the front wall of the store...

...and another row that faces the grocery aisles. The checkouts are beyond the freezer cases straight ahead. I mentioned that there are some areas of the store with very low ceilings, and this is one of them. I assume there's a second floor on this area, but if you're working with a new-build store anyway, why use such unusually low ceilings? If you look at the picture below, you wouldn't know there's another freezer aisle to the left of those freezer cases.

And now we move on to the main part of the front-end. As you can see below, even in the areas of the store with higher ceilings, the ceilings aren't that high.

And one more shot of the front end from the deli/bakery side.

That is all for this store, and unfortunately I haven't been to any of the other Collins ShopRites, so that'll have to do for now. But don't worry, we still have 11 Wakefern stores in Pennsylvania, so there'll be plenty of others. For now, we're going to head a couple blocks north to check out the newest supermarket in this part of Philadelphia! Come back here to The Market Report tomorrow to check it out.