Tops Friendly Markets
Opened: June 8, 2025
Welcome to Ellenville, NY! This small town is about 70 miles northwest of New York City, about 30 miles northeast of Port Jervis. The only major supermarket in town was a ShopRite, built in 1993 by Big V Supermarkets. When Big V went under around 2000, ownership of the ShopRite transferred to SRS, the corporate division of Wakefern. SRS announced in 2023 that they'd be closing this store in the summer of 2024, shortly after they pulled out of the Capital Region to the north. By late 2023, Northeast Grocery had acquired the five Capital Region stores, reopening four of them as Market 32 in early 2024 after some very light remodeling. Northeast Grocery also took over this Ellenville location, but under its Tops division. It underwent a bit more work than the Capital Region stores did, opening just last month -- around a year after it had closed.
Tops did a small remodel to the outside, changing part of the facade from the signature Big V ShopRite setup to the current one, and giving the whole building a paint job. The store is set way back from the road in a very unusual setup, and it seems that the new Tops sign is slightly more visible from the highway than the previous ShopRite one. Inside, the store's basic layout is the same but cosmetically, the work was much more extensive than in the Capital Region Market 32 locations.
You enter to produce and floral in the front-left corner. Deli, prepared foods, and bakery are behind that at the back of the grand aisle, with seafood, meat, and a gluten free department on the back wall. Dairy and frozen are on the right side with beer in the front-right corner.
This is Tops' latest decor package, and it was my first time seeing it in person. I found it very attractive, and it nicely freshened up this store which really wasn't even that old.
The ShopRite definitely wasn't ugly inside, but needed some TLC that Tops gave it. Take a look at the grand aisle here.
I'd assume many of these fixtures are left over from ShopRite in the deli and bakery departments. It looks like some may have been painted.
The signage in these departments is pretty great. I'm a big fan of the lettering and the lighting focused on it, along with the rounded signs sticking out from the walls.
This certainly wasn't a complete floor-to-ceiling renovation, but everything at least got a new coat of paint and the result makes the store look all but brand-new.
With just a slight rearrangement of the back wall, it feels much more open. Compare this to a "before" picture. Notice that the grocery aisles don't appear to be shorter or lower -- in fact the fixtures may even be reused -- but it looks much more spacious these days.
Natural foods are in the first aisle, a definite holdover from ShopRite.
No service seafood at this Tops, which I assume ShopRite had. Instead, packaged grab-and-go seafood is here in a lower refrigerator.
It looks like this half-height refrigerator is new, which has meats on one side, kosher meats on an endcap, and kosher grocery on the back. Like much of this part of New York, this area has a large Orthodox Jewish community. Half a dozen or more kosher supermarkets are just 10 miles west.
The flooring and ceiling are pleasant here. Because the store is bright generally, the dark ceiling doesn't make it feel dingy.
I don't know what would've been in this spot when ShopRite was here, but part of the back wall is now home to a dedicated gluten free department.
Frozen and dairy are in the last few aisles on the right side of the store.
You can see that the Tops renovation wasn't extensive, but freshened up the aging store.
In my opinion, this came out much better than the Market 32 remodels of the former ShopRites, which to me just look drab. Market 32 probably has enough saturation in the Capital Region that they don't have to try too hard; people will shop there anyway. For comparison, here's what a full, original Market 32 looks like.
Frozen and beer on the front end. It looks like Tops removed something that ShopRite had here, possibly an office or something like that, between frozen and the front-end.
And the front-end has been freshened up with some new register lights and a few other new decor elements, looking very good.
Owner: Northeast Grocery
Previous Tenants: ShopRite (1993-2024)
Cooperative: none
Location: 100 Tops Markets Blvd, Ellenville, NY
Photographed: July 2, 2025
The few reviews on Google Maps so far seem to agree it's nice to have a supermarket back in Ellenville -- although there's a small independent called Peters Market and a Walmart Supercenter just outside of town -- and several note that Tops seems to be better than ShopRite here. It's good to see a store like this remain a supermarket (and a newly renovated one at that), and I'm glad I got the chance to see it! Here's this weekend's other posts...
Comments
Post a Comment