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The Food Emporium - Waldwick, NJ

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By Zachary
The Food Emporium
Opened: January 9, 2026
Owner: Adam Shapiro
Previous Tenants: Grand Union > Stop & Shop (2001-2017) > Giant Farmers Market (2018-2024)
Cooperative: Key Food Stores
Location: 19 Wyckoff Ave, Waldwick, NJ
Photographed: January 9, 2026
A lot of the grand openings I write about here are interesting mostly to me and a small group of people who live near the store. No disrespect to those stores, but it's a rare supermarket opening that garners a lot of attention. Opening day at The Food Emporium in Waldwick here might look like a ho-hum event from the picture above, but the reason there was no one outside when I took that picture is because the entirety of the population of Waldwick, NJ was already inside this store, checking out the grand opening. If we rewind time a bit from 10:15 am yesterday when the above picture was taken to 9:59 -- exactly one minute before the store opened its doors...
...we'd see the line of people waiting to enter the new supermarket snaking around the entire storefront and up the side street, at least 100 people and probably quite a few more. The opening of this Food Emporium here in Waldwick became significant for so many people who live nearby because the small town of about 10,000 people had been without a supermarket for a year or two, and in the previous supermarket's final days, it wasn't exactly serving the needs of the town.
Before we dive into the new Food Emporium, let's turn the clock back even farther to the late 1950s, when Grand Union constructed the 16,000 square foot store here in the middle of Waldwick. At the time, their competition was a Food Fair (until recently, a Rite Aid) a couple blocks away. This store actually made it all the way to the end of Grand Union in 2001, having seen an expansion in the 90s to around 22,000 square feet, and it became a Stop & Shop. Stop & Shop, in turn, closed in 2017, with Giant Farmers Market opening up in 2018. This was Giant's third store, joining older locations in downtown Hackensack and in Oakland. Following some wage and overtime violations in 2023, Waldwick and Oakland were sold to a new owner (but Hackensack remained under the original ownership). Shortly thereafter, Waldwick and Oakland joined Key Food, and in either 2024 or 2025, those two stores closed. Hackensack remains in business.
In the spring of 2025, Shapiro Markets signed a lease for this store. Shapiro owns stores in Maplewood,  Bloomingdale, and Ewing, NJ, and they had previously been a member of Allegiance Retail Services. At the end of 2025, Shapiro began the process of converting those three stores to Key Food -- Maplewood switched from Green Way to Food Emporium, Bloomingdale switched from Foodtown to SuperFresh, and Ewing kept the Marrazzo's name -- and that conversion appears to have finished right around the time that this Waldwick location opened.
Given that those two timelines roughly coincide, and that the previous operator here had also been a Key Food member, it's possible part of the deal of Shapiro acquiring this store was that the stores would all join Key Food. Regardless of the details, let's take a look at this brand-new Food Emporium!
When I joined the line -- and I was not the last one on line -- the line wrapped around the side of the building, but we all got into the store pretty quickly. So now, let's head inside!
You can view my past coverage of Giant Farmers Market here and here, but I've also included a few "before" pictures in this post to give you an idea of the change. The grand aisle is on the left side in an expansion. Previously, produce took up the majority of that area, with bakery in the back-left corner. Deli, butcher, and seafood counters lined the back wall, with frozen and dairy in the last aisle on the right and hot food and salad bars in the first grocery aisle between produce and center-store. The layout hasn't changed much, but a very significant change is that deli (and an attached sushi bar) is the only service counter that remains. Bakery is in the front-left corner with an extensive selection of grab-and-go packaged prepared foods along the left side wall, and cheese and crackers take up the former bakery. Produce is on the right side of the grand aisle, with deli in the same spot and hot food and salad bars in front of it. Packaged meats and seafood are in the back-right corner (though, again, no service meat or seafood counters) and frozen and dairy are on the right side of the store.
The new store design is sleek and clean. Almost everything has been redone, with (I believe) entirely new fixtures, new flooring, and new grocery shelving.
The old mint-green color was certainly...an interesting choice, one that the new owners actually poked fun at in a Facebook post. The pre-opening Facebook promotion for this store was exceptional, and if you scroll through their posts, you can see there was high engagement. The new design is much better for sure. At the same time, I was disappointed in the design. It already looks dated to me, though it's probably more accurate to say the intention was for a timeless design. My nitpicky opinion doesn't matter, though -- what does matter is that every single piece of commentary on the store that I overheard while wandering around was positive, most of it very, very positive. So clearly, the new owners have figured it out, and this is exactly what people were looking for in town.
No service bakery counter, although it does look like there's a hefty in-store bakery. Packaged baked goods are on the front wall to the left of the entrance, and packaged baked goods are in various nearby locations.
There's a lot here. In fact, there's so much here that it's easy to forget you're in a store of just 22,000 square feet. Of course, this store won't have every item that a larger ShopRite or Stop & Shop or ACME would, but it's been merchandised exceptionally well.
One of the ways the new owners have maximized selection is tightening the produce department. Giant was, at its core, a produce market with some groceries, so the produce department was large. But there wasn't necessarily a bigger selection than what Food Emporium now has. Reducing the footprint of the produce department without cutting it back much has allowed Food Emporium to use some of the space for grocery items, including the huge selection of protein bars you can see above.
Key Food has been on a bit of an expansion kick for The Food Emporium lately. In addition to this store and Maplewood, a new-build Food Emporium recently opened in Connecticut.
Store-prepared grab-and-go foods were still being stocked shortly after the opening, as you can see here, but the kitchen was hard at work cooking. It looks like the produce and bakery prep are where the service bakery counter used to be at the back of the grand aisle, and deli and prepared foods prep are behind the deli counter.
The selection here angles upscale, consistent with the affluent area. (Median household income in Waldwick is around $155,000.)
The cheese department is against the back wall, in about half of the former bakery counter.
This area was also originally a coffee shop. At some point between 2020 and 2023, Giant moved the bakery counter to the front-right corner of the store but used this area for fresh bread.
Cheese and crackers now take up the area. It's not really a loss to lose the service bakery counter, though, given that there's still plenty of fresh baked goods up at the front.
Looking across the produce department on the right side of the grand aisle...
And looking back up to the front of the store...
As we've come to expect from Key Food grand openings (see here and here for example), the produce looked great for opening day.
Plants and flowers are now in a rather bountiful floral department at the front of the store.
Heading over to the back wall, we see the extensively renovated deli department.
There's also now a sushi counter on the left side of the deli.
Originally, prepared foods bars lined the first grocery aisle, but they've been moved to the back aisle of the store.
Looking towards the right side of the store...
Even though Giant was not exactly a model of a well-run supermarket, this is where it seems to be there's been a step down. Giant had large service meat and seafood counters, while Food Emporium has neither. In fact, the case to the left above is the only seafood in the store.
On the other hand, if these counters were removed, my best guess is they simply weren't doing enough business to keep them, so I don't doubt the judgment here.
One thing that was greatly increased: the frozen foods department. You can see the tiny frozen foods department in the picture of Giant above, which was just a few doors at the back of the store. Now, Food Emporium has a full aisle of frozen foods, as would be typical for a store of this size.
An overview of the back wall of the store, before and after.
Now, heading over to the grocery aisles, here's the prepared foods bar setup that I mentioned in the first aisle.
Now, the first aisle is soda and chips.
The grocery aisles appear to have new shelving as well as new aisle markers and, of course, the flooring was redone throughout the store.
The aforementioned new frozen foods aisle...
Dairy lines the outside of the last aisle, and that hasn't changed.
But the fixtures have been replaced.
The front end is looking a bit less festive with the international flags gone, but much more streamlined. Giant wasn't the right store for this location, and it really seems this Food Emporium is. I've yet to see or hear a single negative comment about this store. We'll see if it stays that way, but the first signs are very, very good for this location.
A newly-refreshed front-end, very crowded for the opening.
And that brings us to the end of this tour -- an extensive one, so thanks for riding along! I'm glad to see this space remaining a supermarket, and this sure looks like a really good transformation of this nearly 70-year-old supermarket.
Don't miss this weekend's other posts here!
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