ShopRite
Opened: 1954
In addition to a look at the new Hillside SuperFresh, I've got two more awesome ShopRite remodels to show you. Several ShopRite operators have really been giving their all for new stores and renovations lately, and these are absolutely top-of-the-line stores. See Watchung and Rochelle Park, among many others, for example. Here in Nutley, we're back to check out the completed -- and extremely impressive -- remodel after seeing it almost done back in November.
When I visited in November, the decor was almost fully installed, but all the finishing touches weren't up yet. If you compare these pictures to the ones linked above, you can see there's some text and accents that hadn't yet been installed.
That's true in the pharmacy, which now has some fun vines. Unfortunately, it also means that the department signage is almost impossible to read. This is the one department that falls flat, in my opinion, while the rest look spectacular.
All-new fixtures, decor, flooring, lighting, and even ceiling. There was previously a drop ceiling here that was removed. The drop ceiling was removed in several parts of the store, giving it a more open feel since the drop ceiling was a bit lower.
Really spectacular signage, though, including historical pictures of the past stores the LoCurcios owned. Their original store was here in downtown Nutley, and was called the Park Fruit & Vegetable Market, hence the signage here.
The rest of the store hasn't gotten too much more work, but we can see it looks great. You'd never know that this store is more than 70 years old.
Some awesome mutli-dimensional frozen foods signage has gone in, too, on the right side of the supermarket.
These hadn't yet been installed when I visited last.
And the meat department's signage is all finished, too. Looking very sleek and modern!
Last time I was here, the meat department wasn't quite finished yet.
The House of Cheese is a great setup, too. It feels high-end but the store still feels like a ShopRite. It's a good blend of mainstream and upscale.
Incidentally, I'm fairly certain the drop ceiling visible above was the height for this whole side of the store, so you can see they gained a bit of height by removing it. Drop ceiling remains over the center store, though.
Looking great!
ShopRite
Welcome back to Belleville! Don't remember the Belleville ShopRite? That's okay -- most of my Belleville attention lately has been on the SuperFresh Food World, which is always up to some minor reshuffling. That store was a Pathmark until 2015, and so was this one, although this one closed earlier, in 2010. After extensive renovation, the owners of the Nutley ShopRite opened up here (they now also own the Kearny ShopRite). You can see my 2019 post on the store here for the "before" pictures.
It was certainly not an unattractive store then, but it was beginning to show its age (after all, it has been 12 years since it opened, which is often around the time that supermarket owners consider remodeling). It's in the process of getting the same decor package as Nutley.
It doesn't look like flooring is being replaced (although Nutley got all-new flooring, so it's possible that's still on the table), but lots of new fixtures and some great new decor.
The layout hasn't changed although a lot of the fixtures are new, so my diagram in that original post is still pretty accurate. The bakery department is still a strong suit here.
I love the branded Belleville Dough Co. sign here. It helps, too, that LoCurcio runs really good stores, so it's not just that the store is attractive, but that it's well-run with good-quality products.
I'm thinking the ceiling here in the grand aisle will probably be repainted black, like it was in Nutley (at least I hope so, because that's the one thing holding the store back and making it look like an older store). Nutley, constructed in 1954, feels much newer than this one in part because of the attention given to ceiling and lighting, even though Pathmark only built this building in the 1980s.
Incidentally, Pathmark moved here from an older location at 175 Washington Ave (now demolished). That store briefly became an Associated when Pathmark moved out.
You can see the decor is basically the same here, with just a couple slight differences from Nutley.
Bakery, prepared foods, deli, and seafood line the right side of the grand aisle. That's rather similar to a lot of Pathmark stores, so I'm assuming that layout is left over from the Pathmark days.
Love the new decor! But the ceiling needs a paint job. You can see the stains, especially around the air vents.
But the produce department is looking great! I again love the Park Fruit & Vegetable Market sign.
At the back of the store, where the meat department and grocery aisles are, the ceiling has been painted black in part, so I assume it'll be done in the rest of the store, too.
It seems that the decor package is a bit simpler here than in Nutley, and I don't fully know why that is. Both stores looked quite good before, and both do now too, but you can see that for instance the deli and seafood signage is more deluxe in Nutley. This store lacks some of the more deluxe touches, too, such as the House of Cheese. That may simply be a result of the lower average income around this store compared to Nutley.
Love the new meat department sigange at the back, though!
You can see there's still work ongoing in the ceiling, so I assume that once that's all finished it'll be repainted. I would love to see new flooring here, too, but it looks like that might not happen.
Beautiful new HABA shelving!
Because the ceiling is higher here, the decor is larger and bolder, as we can see here in dairy.
I really like the lighting on the signs here in the last aisle.
As you can see above, there's still enough space on the walls that I'm not worried about those things that seem unfinished. Because, well, they are unfinished. This remodel is definitely still ongoing.
Love the LoCurcio signage here, too!
Bottled water in the former pharmacy. This is perhaps as good a time as any to mention that ShopRite seems to be withdrawing significantly from the pharmacy business. It's a rough industry to be in, that's for sure, but even after closing more than 60 pharmacies in 2021 they've continued to close more. Notably, the pharmacies in ShopRites are owned by Wakefern, not the store owners themselves. By my count, there are currently 275 ShopRites, 147 of which have pharmacies. 51 never had a pharmacy, but 77 pharmacies have been closed in the last five years (this one among them).
The front-end actually runs up the middle of the store, as you can see in that layout diagram in the older post. Basically no changes, although the self-checkouts have been moved from the inside up to the front wall. There's several signs in this area left over from the before the renovation, and I don't know how much this part will change.
Even though this seems to be a slightly simpler version of the decor, they don't miss any opportunity to have great signage throughout.
Owner: LoCurcio Family Markets
Previous Tenants: none
Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.
Location: 437 Franklin Ave, Nutley, NJ
Photographed: June 5, 2025
Nutley isn't the more exciting of the two ShopRites I have to show you today, though, given that we already saw it in progress. Let's head just under a mile and a half southeast to one of LoCurcio's other locations to see how it's looking!
Opened: 2013
Owner: LoCurcio Family Markets
Previous Tenants: Pathmark (1980s-2010)
Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.
Location: 726 Washington Ave, Belleville, NJ
Photographed: June 5, 2025
And that's all for this ShopRite, and I'll be back for sure when the work is all done. Don't forget to check in on the new Hillside SuperFresh here, and on Monday we're back to Boston!
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