Special Report: Village ShopRite!

I hope your spring break is wonderful -- although, at least for my part of New Jersey, it's still gray and rainy and cold. I'm interrupting my planned break to post about something that might be big news, although it's really difficult to tell just how significant the scope of the change might be. We're here in northern New Jersey to visit some of the Village Super Market-owned ShopRite stores. VSM owns about 30 ShopRites in NJ, NY, PA, and MD, and a handful of Gourmet Garage and Fairway stores in New York City. They've recently remodeled several stores, including Bernardsville and Springfield, and just under two months ago unveiled a spectacular new store in Watchung replacing an older location. About a year ago, Village began introducing Gourmet Garage and Fairway branded items at their ShopRite stores. (See here.) I was tipped off by a message from a reader who works in the industry saying he was told that, about three weeks ago, employees of a Village-owned ShopRite were instructed to abruptly remove all Gourmet Garage-branded items and cover or remove all of the Gourmet Garage signage in the stores. That struck me as odd, since the items were only introduced recently. So I went to a few Village stores in New Jersey to investigate -- and what I found might mean something much bigger is coming.

We begin our look at these changes in Livingston, where cut produce and prepared foods (all previously under the Gourmet Garage brands) are now in conspicuously unbranded packages. Each only says "distributed by VSM NY LLC" with the address of Village's Bronx commissary. In fact, on the labels below, you can see the space at the top that was previously used for the Gourmet Garage brand. As an aside: all of these pictures are from today, May 29.

The refrigerators holding the packaged prepared food items has no branding for Gourmet Garage or anything else.

The recently-remodeled Springfield location has an even more obvious change. In the deli department, a recently-installed Gourmet Garage sign has been removed, and if you look carefully at the refrigerator case below, price tags have been placed over the Gourmet Garage logos previously there. You can see how the section used to look here.

The prepared foods stock was a bit light, but my best guess is simply that it was pretty early in the morning when I visited. It doesn't seem that there's any supply issue, especially since the products are still coming from the same production and distribution center.

Still, it seems like there might be some trouble filling the prepared foods cases with the Gourmet Garage items gone -- this case, which is labeled for Ruby Foo's Asian Fusion, the brand of the sushi counter, has some prepared Asian foods but also a somewhat random selection of packaged salad bowls from an outside vendor, some Eat Clean Bro meal kits, and a good ol' shelf of bottled water.

A careful look at the refrigerator case in the Gourmet Garage area shows some price tags clearly deliberately placed over the Gourmet Garage logos. Notice, though, that this one actually (in tiny letters) still refers to Gourmet Garage.

The logo peeks through some other tags over in the deli department. Clearly, the goal here was to quickly cover up the brand, for reasons that I'm still not certain of.

But the mystery does become a little clearer -- and simultaneously more intriguing -- at the brand-new Watchung store, still not even two months old. Right away, we can tell something's up. The Gourmet Garage and Fairway logos have been removed from this sign at the entrance, along with the Village ShopRite logo to the right.

Inside, the former Gourmet Garage department -- see here -- is looking awfully bare with no signage at all. Some of the products being sold in this area, which include cut fruit and prepared foods, have ShopRite labels and others have nothing at all.

Here's an example, featuring a type of label I don't think I've seen at Village before other than this store and Old Bridge.

One thing is clear: this was an abrupt change. Here in Watchung, several of the references to Gourmet Garage and Fairway are covered with duct tape. It's pretty well-disguised here, but still noticeable.

But every single reference to Fairway and Gourmet Garage has been scrubbed.

Over in the cheese department, the cheeses are now labeled with ShopRite labels, and the Fairway brand has been literally cut off of the signage for each cheese.

In the Sub Shop, it's actually very noticeable because the tape used to cover the Gourmet Garage branding is kind of falling off.

The coffee shop has lost its Fairway brand, too. It feels like 2020 all over again...

On the signs for each coffee, a small piece of tape has been used to cover the Fairway brand. It's still visible on some of the barrels, but only in the back. The front row has been rotated so the Fairway name is no longer visible.

And over in seafood, only "garage" remains on this sign. It's very clear this is a short-term problem solve, since I can't imagine Village would let a brand-new store go like this for too long. Notice the price tags on the case below covering more logos like in Springfield.

A careful look around the rest of the store makes things clearer -- and weirder. I commented when this store opened that, after years of signage inside the stores reading Village Super Market, signage inside this store read Village ShopRite (see seafood). Every single one of those Village ShopRite signs has been removed. Every one. Several signs that refer only to Village or Village Super Market remain, as do some signs that say only ShopRite. But every one that says both Village and ShopRite has been removed. The brackets they had been hung on are very visible throughout the store, such as this one just below the artichoke on the wall of the produce department (you can see where there used to be a round sign here).

And below, the one random board stands out on the dark blue dairy wall. Here's where it gets interesting: although Village owns the Fairway and Gourmet Garage stores in New York City, Village does not own those brands. Wakefern, the cooperative that runs ShopRite and other stores, owns the brands (including, obviously, the ShopRite brand). What does it mean, then, if Village is removing Wakefern-owned brands from their signage but keeping the products? One possible explanation: Village plans to leave Wakefern. If Village were to split with ShopRite, they would no longer have access to the Fairway and Gourmet Garage brands. They also wouldn't want signs that say both Village and ShopRite, but signs that say only ShopRite could easily be taken down later. Obviously, though, it would be extremely, incredibly unusual for Village to leave Wakefern. It's hard to stress how monumental of a move that would be. In the last several decades, only one member tried to leave Wakefern -- that was Big V, which filed for bankruptcy and eventually ended up simply being acquired outright by Wakefern. But I struggle to think of any other reason that Village would so hastily remove all traces of these brands from the stores (rather than, say, gradually phasing them out with another brand coming in over time).

The wooden sign bracket blends in better in the meat department, and you can see the logo that was removed to the far left in this picture.

As recently as May 9, when I visited Bernardsville, Village was still using Gourmet Garage branding. This is a very recent change, within the last few weeks, and it definitely has the potential to suggest something much larger is coming. Still, it's hard to draw many conclusions just yet -- but the abrupt timeline here makes me think there's more under the hood than what we can see. Either way, you can be sure I'll be keeping track of what's going on and I'll report back soon. Stay tuned for a few more updates!

Tomorrow: A Save A Lot switches to SuperFresh in northern New Jersey.

Saturday: A spectacular new supermarket opens in Brooklyn.

Sunday: Welcome to Boston!

Edit to add: Gourmet Garage branding is covered up at the Essex Green ShopRite, too, observed Friday.