The Market Report

Price Rite Marketplace of Allentown Opened: 2001 Previous Tenants:  ACME Markets (1968-2000) Cooperative:  Wakefern Food Corp. Location:  1720 S 4th St, Allentown, PA Photographed:  January 8, 2021 Our first Lehigh Valley store tour is here at the Price Rite of Allentown! We're about a mile and a half outside of downtown Allentown (or, as it's called in eastern Pennsylvania, center city rather than downtown). The 35,000 square foot store was built as an ACME in the late 1960s, and used to more strongly look like an ACME than it does now. ACME closed in 2000, and the store reopened in 2001 as one of the earliest Price Rite locations. Price Rite is the limited-assortment discount store end of Wakefern (ShopRite). Most recently, this store has gotten the latest decor package around 2020. Inside, Price Rite seems to have stripped most of the ACME attributes out, although there may be some remnants left. I'm not sure how ACME would've had the back wall area set up, but thi

Welcome to the Lehigh Valley! This region encompasses Easton, Bethlehem, and Allentown of Pennsylvania, and into the Phillipsburg area of New Jersey. We are going to be on the Pennsylvania side this time around, working our way west to east. We'll be seeing a few places in Allentown, Bethlehem, and Easton, along with some of the smaller towns and areas like Center Valley, Whitehall, Hellertown, and Fountain Hill. This time around (and we've been here before , back in ancient history) we'll be focusing on some of the smaller corner stores, neighborhood markets, and former supermarkets rather than the chain supermarkets. Really the only big chains with any significant presence here are GIANT and Weis, and we'll be seeing one of each but a lot of the other, more interesting (to me at least) stuff this time through. We begin tomorrow with a former supermarket on Grocery Archaeology ! But wait, there's more. Here's today's special reports! Special Report: Stop &

Market Basket Opened:  January 2023 Previous Tenants:  none Location:  200 Hartford Tpk, Shrewsbury, MA Photographed:  January 21, 2023 Welcome to The Market Report's first Market Basket! Not the first one I've been to, but the first one we're covering on the blog. The northern Massachusetts-based cult favorite chain has been rapidly expanding around New England with its massive stores, huge selection, low prices, and no-nonsense atmosphere. It's not a discount or limited-assortment store, for sure -- it's more like a large ShopRite with decor straight from the 1970s. Yes, it has been updated in some departments, but the chain is famous for stubbornly resisting any design trends that may be floating around. I must say that this 85,000 square foot store, which opened in the Worcester suburb of Shrewsbury around a month ago, is admittedly much more modern-looking than most. When we finally make our way up to New England, we'll be seeing several Market Baskets, ran

H Mart Opened: late 2022 Previous Tenants:  Foodtown > Edwards > Stop & Shop Location:  34-51 48th St, Long Island City, Queens, NY Photographed:  January 11, 2023 Have you toured the Long Island City Stop & Shop yet? That Stop & Shop closed in September 2022 and, by the end of the following month, the store had become a location of Lyndhurst, NJ-based H Mart, a Korean supermarket chain. H Mart did relatively little to the 57,000 square foot space before opening, with most of the work being light cosmetic (painting the walls and hanging a few new signs), and merchandising, since of course H Mart's product mix is going to be rather different from Stop & Shop's. I believe this is now the largest H Mart in New York City, though of course not the largest overall (you barely need to get 10 miles outside of New York City to find a 75,000 square foot H Mart ). As we can see, H Mart has drastically increased, well, the amount of stuff. There's a lot more pro