Special Report: ShopRite - Hadley Commons, South Plainfield, NJ

ShopRite of Hadley Commons

Opened: May 8, 2024

Owner: Saker ShopRites

Previous Tenants: Grant City > Kmart > Sears Essentials > subdivided

Cooperative: Wakefern Food

Location: 6781 Hadley Rd, South Plainfield, NJ

Photographed: May 8, 2024

It's time for another grand opening! I mentioned the other day that there's been a lot going on, including a lot of grand openings and renovations. Saker ShopRites is one of the largest Wakefern members, with around 40 stores. (They recently acquired seven stores from Perlmart, another Wakefern member, in 2021.) Saker notoriously maintains their store fleet exceptionally well, with the vast majority of the stores. Notable exceptions include Edison, Pennington (an extreme), Bordentown, and the Perlmart stores. Until recently, the Piscataway location numbered among those, but yesterday, the brand-new ShopRite of Hadley Commons opened at the former Middlesex Mall. It's a 93,000 square foot behemoth of a store, replacing a large space originally occupied by Grant City and later Kmart, then subdivided.

The move is about half a mile, up the street from the former Piscataway location. It's a very close by move, but it's technically across town lines -- the new one is just barely in South Plainfield. About 7/10 of a mile north is a Stop & Shop in a former Edwards which, amazingly, retains most of its Edwards decor and is in really sad shape. (I wouldn't be surprised if that store closes in the near future, since it hasn't been renovated in the many, many years it's been open.)

There's another ShopRite in South Plainfield, about three miles north at Golden Acres Mall, and that store is only a few years older than this one, having opened in 2016. Although the Hadley Commons store is about 15,000 square feet larger than the Golden Acres store, they're nearly identical.

We enter to a bountiful floral display and the customer service counter in a setup typical for Saker stores. Sushi and the Chinese food bar are in the front left corner along with the cafe, with deli and prepared foods lining the left side wall. Bakery and cheese are at the back, with produce in the first aisle. Seafood and meat are on the back wall, with dairy/frozen on the right side. Pharmacy is in an island at the front of the first aisle.

I'm sure we're all familiar with the Saker setup by now, since they haven't significantly changed their format or decor for quite some time, nearly 20 years.

I suppose it's not in need of updating, but I commented on the post for Middletown that the replacement store uses the same decor as the older store. Same here, although obviously the decor at Piscataway was minimal.

One thing that I consistently noted here was the quality of the products. Obviously, they wanted to make a good first impression for opening day, but I think Saker can keep it up.

An outside vendor does the sushi and Chinese food, and both looked really good.

Looking down the produce aisle, with deli/prepared foods to the left and the grocery aisles to the right.

There's a cafe under the offices on the left. Rows of prepared hot and cold foods are in front.

Here's a look down the left side wall of the store in the prepared foods area.

I can only imagine how much volume they're anticipating doing here with this massive sub counter! Each service department is enormous and absolutely piled with fresh merchandise. I doubt it'll be scaled back much as it continues running. The older Saker stores look nearly identical.

World Class Kitchens between the cafe and the deli. Interestingly, Saker actually owns its own commissary and distribution centers that make the food centrally and then send it out to the stores -- but a lot of the stuff is made in-store, too.

Check out these options at the olive bar!

A wall of bagels, rolls, and bread is up next, with the bakery service counter in the back-left corner.

Many of the baked goods aren't made in-store, but instead it seems that Saker has curated a selection of the best of a lot of producers -- at least five different bread bakeries (Anthony & Sons, La Brea, Hudson Bread, Teixeira's, NY Brooklyn Bread) are represented, with others making pastries and cannoli, for instance. Still other stuff is baked in-store, and there's a large bakery prep area behind the service counter.

Needless to say, the breads all looked amazing. Notice the service counter with fresh breads and the cases behind that.

Looking back up to the front of the store.

And across the back wall, we transition into cheese, then seafood and meat on the rest of the back wall.

Massive cheese island, as we expect from Saker! There's also a service cheese counter.

I think this visit really brought into focus for me just how far ahead Saker (and certain other ShopRite operators) are, compared to competition. ACME and Stop & Shop are the other two mainstream supermarkets in this region, and neither even comes close to this level of selection or service departments.

Seafood and service butcher on the back wall.

Here's a look at the first few aisles. The floral and customer service departments are in an island opposite this.

As we've seen in other Saker ShopRites, the first few aisles are the Nutrition Center with a massive selection of natural foods.

Over on the back wall, looking up to the grand aisle. You can see the Nutrition Center signage here.

Dairy in the back right corner.

I'm not sure what else I can say -- this store is a very typical Saker store, just a particularly large and new one. But it looks a lot like older ones.

The store was very busy for opening day, and I have to imagine it won't be that busy indefinitely but these Saker stores do ridiculously high volume. Foot traffic data isn't available for the new store yet -- obviously, it opened yesterday -- but Placer.ai says the old Piscataway location got 110,000 visits last month, and the Stop & Shop just to the north got 63,000. I have to assume that that's gonna lean more in ShopRite's favor now that the new store is open.

And a look at the massive, and spacious, front-end...

That's all for now! Don't forget to see today's regularly scheduled post here, and a look at the future SuperFresh in Highland Park here!