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Village Marketplace - South Orange, NJ

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By Zachary
Village Marketplace
Opened: October 29, 2025
Owner: Mustafa Coskun
Previous Tenants: Village Super Market > ShopRite > Village Market > Garden of Eden Marketplace > Ashley Marketplace
Cooperative: none
Location: 1 South Orange Ave, South Orange, NJ
Photographed: October 29, 2025
October 29 was an exciting day, with two much-anticipated supermarkets opening in the New York metro area. Anticipated perhaps only by me, but here in downtown South Orange, residents have been clamoring for a new supermarket since Ashley Marketplace closed back in March. (The other supermarket is out in Brooklyn, which you can see here.) But Ashley suffered from a multi-year decline along with its sister store, Aspen Marketplace, in Hoboken which also recently closed. 
Let's back up and take a minute to review the background on this store. Cobbled together from a few storefronts in the busy downtown area of South Orange Village -- a suburb immediately outside Newark -- this grocer was originally the Village Super Market, opening in 1937. Village eventually expanded and in the early 1950s, joined the Wakefern Food cooperative, becoming ShopRite in 1951. This store remained a ShopRite into the 1990s or so, but with a footprint of only around 15,000 square feet, it's far smaller than the average ShopRite of that time. Village around that time took a few of their small stores in upscale areas and converted them to specialty grocers branded Village Market. That concept didn't last more than a few years, though, and the Village Market stores were sold or closed by around 2000. New York City-based gourmet grocer chain Garden of Eden Marketplace opened up here several years later, but pulled out of New Jersey in 2013. The Hoboken and South Orange locations were sold to Cheol Kim, a local grocer who converted them to Aspen Marketplace and Ashley Marketplace, respectively. Both closed in early 2025. Now, Garden of Eden -- down to just two Manhattan locations -- has reclaimed the South Orange store, and after about seven months of renovations has reopened South Orange under the name Village Marketplace. No relation, of course, to the prior Village that occupied the space; just a generic name referring to South Orange Village.
The store has two entrances: one in the front, facing South Orange Avenue (see the first picture), and one in the back facing a parking garage (see the second picture). The front entrance brings you into the foyer you can see above, with a staircase to the right bringing you up to the second floor where there was a restaurant until recently. Village Marketplace hasn't changed the supermarket layout that much, but has done a lot of very necessary renovations. Let's enter at the front to tour the new supermarket!
A small customer service counter and register, along with a few chairs and tables, are immediately inside the entrance. A bakery and coffee counter are on the front wall, albeit significantly smaller than the previous one. Here's the best look I have at the interior of Ashley. More baked goods are on the front wall, with beverages in the front-left corner. Where Ashley (and Garden of Eden before it) had rows of cheeses, a salad bar, and prepared foods, Village Marketplace has now added a few more grocery aisles with lower shelving. The island in the middle of the store with deli, seafood, and cheese has been removed, with all the service counters now on the left-side wall of the store. From front to back, seafood, deli/prepared foods, and butcher are on the left side wall with a small salad bar, hot food bar, and olive bar near it. Packaged meats, prepared foods, and cheeses line the right side of that aisle. The short aisles running side-to-side across the store have been removed and replaced with a few much longer aisles running front to back, including dairy and frozen on the right side. Produce is in the back of the store, along with the main registers, facing the parking garage.
The shelving on the left here is approximately where the previous bakery counter was. You can also see the added aisles to the right.
Minor layout changes aside, the renovation was actually very extensive even though the basic setup and appearance of the store is the same. In addition to replacing the majority of the fixtures throughout, Village Marketplace installed a new terrazzo-style floor -- a big improvement over the lumpy and beat-up wood laminate flooring previously here. All-new lighting has also gone in, plus a fresh coat of paint all around.
The store is immaculate and feels very bright, with a much more traditional layout than previously. Essentially, the service departments now line the perimeter with grocery aisles in the middle, rather than islands of service departments and short grocery aisles.
In the below picture, we're looking across the front of the store from the left side (seafood/deli) over to the right (dairy/frozen).
The olive bar, hot food bar, and salad bar are in the first aisle on the left side, with service departments lining the wall to the left.
The decor is simple but attractive, and enough attention has been put into the fixtures, flooring, and lighting that the decor doesn't need to be that special.
Still, there are some extremely nice touches like these hanging lamps over the deli and the wooden accents on the ceiling.
One issue with the decor: all of the signs direct people to villagefoodnj.com, a website that doesn't exist. It's instead villagemarketplacenj.com.
The butcher counter is looking very good with a warm wooden wall, newly freshened up, and attractive hanging lights.
The smaller, but still extensive, World of Cheese is opposite the service counters.
And the grocery aisles are bright, orderly, and long because they now run front-to-back.
There's a small selection of nonfoods/HABA here, too.
The baskets, which once hung across the whole ceiling, are now contained in a smaller section as an accent.
Most of the shelving has been replaced, but some of the previous wooden shelving is still in the store, including in the front-right corner where nuts and candy are.
Dairy and frozen are in the last two aisles on the right side of the store. While I don't remember for sure -- and the aisles aren't numbered -- I would estimate there are about six aisles here, including the deli/meat/seafood aisle and dairy/frozen.
It does look like these fixtures are new, which again was quite necessary. At the very least, they're refurbished and looking better than Ashley's refrigeration.
The freezer cases are also new. This renovation wasn't a reinvention of the store -- it's largely the same as it was -- but instead a necessary fix-up.
And the newly streamlined produce department in the back of the store.
It's looking good, and it's worth noting that October 29 was just the soft opening so there are things like the absurdly large number of water bottles here that probably won't remain over time.
Here, too, you can see some empty spaces on the shelves that will be filled soon enough, I'm sure.
One interesting choice: almost no organic produce here, other than some packaged berries and packaged salad greens. I recall way back when that Ashley had quite a bit, but maybe Village Marketplace has decided it just wouldn't sell fast enough.
This front-end is also new, in the back-right corner of the store. The entrance and exit to the parking garage are visible here. This is a much more logical setup for the registers (Ashley removed the registers that had been back here and converted the front registers to self-checkout).
I'm glad to see this store getting the work it needed, even if it's more of a needed fix than a completely new store. And it's always nice to see independent supermarkets opening up. Speaking of that, check out this weekend's other posts here!

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