ShopRite
Opened: 1960s
Owner: Robert Sumas / Village Super Market
Previous Tenants: none
Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.
Location: 483 S Livingston Ave, Livingston, NJ
Photographed: February 19 and February 25, 2026
This is the same type of fixture as what we've seen in some of the newer Village stores.
It's convenient that the sign for Five Boro Bread was never removed, even when the breads were moved to the deli counter in the back, because now breads are back here. However, I'm not certain that this decor is going to stay, as we'll see.
The prepared foods bars now run side to side across the grand aisle.
And the produce department has been reshuffled just a little bit, too, with new bins.
I was initially thinking the decor wouldn't change (because it's not that old), but apparently it will. The decor in the rest of the store -- excluding the grand aisle -- has all been removed and is in the process of being replaced. (In the past, the grand aisle decor was replaced without redoing the rest of the store, now it seems to be the other way around.)
You can see the beginnings of that below. Also below, you can see that the grocery aisles have been shortened slightly. The flooring hasn't been redone or patched yet, so the holes are covered with mats and pallets of sale items.
Now back to the wall, which has gotten primer paint (or something like that) right over the decor.
This refrigeration was all replaced last fall, along with all of the frozen and dairy cases.
The grocery aisles are also being reset. It doesn't look like there are any big changes, just some rearranging.
As I added as a late addendum to the previous post, the rearrangement of the kosher foods has nothing to do with the remodel but is instead preparing for Passover. Kosher foods that aren't kosher for Passover have been shifted into temporary shelving in the area where the grocery aisles have been shortened. The kosher aisle is now all kosher for Passover, and when Passover is done, it'll go back. That just hadn't hit me when I saw it happening the last time.
It looks like this will continue down this part of the dairy department, but the last aisle will have new decor.
Here's the kosher aisle, now all kosher for Passover.
And the store is heavily promoting the newly-expanded kosher department with these signs around both inside and outside...
The last aisle is now painted blue, probably to eventually look like this. That's in Watchung.
And some new decor going into the pharmacy, although the signage isn't up yet.
Speaking of Watchung, let's revisit it briefly. It was almost a year ago that Village Super Market abruptly removed all of the Fairway and Gourmet Garage brands from their stores, and now they've started using the Dean & Deluca brand instead. Surely they've replaced the blacked-out Fairway and Gourmet Garage brands by now...
...or not. The black tape over the digital price tag is a particularly puzzling one (couldn't the price tag simply be changed to "ShopRite coffee" instead of "Fairway coffee" or something like that?) but the black tape remains.
Or at least it's holding on as well as it can, months later. Several spots are peeling off, revealing a hint of what used to be underneath, like here in the cheese department. But nothing has replaced these brands anywhere in the store, and the "Village ShopRite" signs haven't been replaced, either, leaving the same bare wooden brackets that were there last spring.
This probably won't be resolved until the lawsuit between Wakefern and Village is, and who knows when that will be. I'm just surprised that in the last 10 months, Village hasn't even gotten a couple stickers with their own logo or even the ShopRite logo to put over these brands, though then again, how many average customers are even going to notice anything unusual? I'll keep an eye on this as it continues to develop, though. Here's this weekend's other stores...
Opened: 1960s
Owner: Robert Sumas / Village Super Market
Previous Tenants: none
Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.
Location: 483 S Livingston Ave, Livingston, NJ
Photographed: February 19 and February 25, 2026
Time for a somewhat snowy return to the Livingston ShopRite after a remodel started not too long ago. It's becoming clear that the scope of the remodel is much more significant than I had initially thought, so let's check it out.
The bakery department has been rearranged. A service counter that was previously here has been removed, and the case for donuts and pastries to the left of the service counter is also gone. Now, fresh breads are back here in the bakery department -- that's where they were originally before they were moved over to the deli counter, and then the fresh bread counter was eliminated entirely -- and all self-service rolls, bagels, pastries, donuts, and the like are in a new island opposite this area.
Here's a better look at the new sushi counter, taking the space of the previous grab-and-go beverages and self-checkouts at the side door. The checkouts have been moved over to the other side of the door.
A week later, the back wall had been painted with a primer right over the existing decor.
The dairy department is a bit further along than the meat department, with a new wood-style wallpaper going in. The awesome milk sign remains for now, at least.
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