ShopRite
Opened: September 19, 2026
It's time to visit the newest ShopRite! This store is located in Edgewater Commons, and was built as a Pathmark in 1996. In 2015, it was sold to ACME, and you can see my tour of the ACME here. The 70,000 square foot ACME closed at the end of their lease this summer, having reopened after a couple weeks as an Inserra-owned ShopRite yesterday. I visited in the afternoon, and let me tell you that it was absolutely insane. The store was packed with people, but the parking lot was easily the worst parking lot situation I've ever had the misfortune of driving through. This ShopRite is in a massive mall, so there's already a lot of traffic, but opening day drew out incredible crowds. Was it worth braving the throngs to visit this ShopRite on opening day?
In my opinion, in a word: no. It's a perfectly fine supermarket, but essentially unchanged since the ACME days. It was an unremarkable ACME and now it's an unremarkable ShopRite. In fact, Inserra did almost nothing during the transition other than painting the walls and placing a couple decals over existing ACME decor. As we'll see, the work here was extremely minimal.
The layout these days is identical to how ACME was set up. In fact, you can see here that all of the ACME fixtures remain (as far as I could tell, Inserra didn't replace any fixtures at all). Produce and deli/seafood are in the grand aisle running up the middle of the store. Grocery aisles are to the left and right, with pharmacy in the front-left corner, bakery at the back of the grand aisle, meats on the back-right side of the store, and dairy/frozen on the right end. That layout is also nearly identical to Pathmark's setup, and in fact the flooring is left over from Pathmark, too.
Check out the "restrooms" sign left over from ACME above. And something interesting here: It looks like Inserra is preparing to open the pharmacy here. A couple years ago, Inserra closed all of its in-store pharmacies, so if they did open this one, it would be a notable departure for them. Otherwise, not much to see...
...both in terms of changes from ACME and, uh, overall. It's an extremely bland store (the ACME was fairly bland, too, to be fair). It's shockingly different from some other ShopRite operators' new stores, but pretty much in line with what we've seen from Inserra elsewhere. I suspect this store will do just fine regardless of what it looks like. But in the past several years, I've noticed some really significant improvements at Wakefern, both in terms of the new stores they're opening but also operations at their existing stores. For the most part, Inserra seems content to do things the way they've always done, and don't seem to be thinking of ways to reset their formula in new stores and remodels (the way Village clearly is, for example, as linked above). A notable exception is their new store in Brooklyn, which is first-rate. It seems that the existing Inserra formula works just fine here in this area, but it does have the effect that their new and renovated stores can feel dated already.
As you can clearly see, that didn't deter the many, many customers here for opening day. Above and below, you can see clearly how the new decor signage is simply posted on top of the existing ACME decor.
The grocery shelving doesn't appear to have been replaced, but has new trim on the front with digital tags.
Patsy's Super Market signage in place of Lancaster Brand on the back wall. You can see this setup is nearly identical to how Pathmark's would've been more than a decade ago. Here's a look at this store just days after it opened as an ACME.
It's possible that part of the reason such minimal work was done during the transition is to keep the experience as similar as possible for customers, so it already feels familiar despite being a brand new store. I also don't know if Inserra plans to remodel the location further in the near future, which would also explain the minimal changes for now.
But changes will definitely have to come, such as these clearly aging freezers which will probably need to be replaced eventually.
In fact, some (maybe even most) of the refrigeration and freezers here are left over from the Pathmark days. So I can't imagine that this store will go on without more attention in the future.
To me, this store certainly felt unfinished, especially in places like this corner to the right above. Probably not something the average shopper would pick up on, and as we can see from this photo of the front-end, it clearly wasn't deterring shoppers for opening day.
In other words, this feels more like the type of change that could've been done in a few days, rather than the month this store remained closed. It's not a bad store at all, and I have no doubt it'll do well. But I was hoping for more from a new ShopRite. We'll see if more is coming in the future months or years! For now, here's a look at the rest of this weekend's posts...
Opened: September 19, 2026
Owner: Inserra Supermarkets
Previous Tenants: Pathmark (1996-2015) > ACME Markets (2015-2026)
Cooperative: Wakefern Food
Location: 481 River Rd, Edgewater, NJ
Photographed: September 19, 2026
The work WAS done in a few days! The property was untouched and with zero changes as of my last visit on Sept 10th. ShopRite DID upgrade the milk cases! Those refrigerators are brand-new. Used to be busted old cases leftover from Pathmark and much of the milk was on rolling units that were just pushed into place. It's one upgrade that was desperately needed here and nice that ShopRite did it! Side note: I have some seen grumblings online that prices are higher here than other ShopRites.
ReplyDeleteNot only Acme's layout, but of course that produce in the middle of the store is leftover PATHMARK layout!
ReplyDeleteAnd that lettering for the pharmacy definitely looks like the signs that are ShopRite installed (not just leftover from Acme) so I guess they are trying something different - unless they are going to have someone else run that like other stores do (but not seen that I know of in ShopRite)?
Additionally, they only needed to look at the prior tenant to see how to do what was done (or not done) in a much quicker timeframe, as Acme, Stop & Shop and similar closed most of those A&P acquisitions for only a couple days at most to switch over (as did smaller chains like Price Chopper and Hannaford up here in NY State when they took over Grand Union locations 25 years ago now).
I was a part of the team that helped set that store up. We had only gotten the keys a few days prior (Tuesday) with no product on the shelves. We set that store up from bare shelving and cases up in four days, with a grand opening on Saturday. Very proud to have worked alongside a team of such dedicated people to get a supermarket up and running for the community, including Wakefern, Inserra, contractors, and all other parties. There are further upgrades planned soon. Additionally, be on the lookout for our new Jersey City replacement store opening soon!
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