The Market Report

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 out...

Village Marketplace Opening:  TBA Owner:  unknown Previous Tenants:  Village Super Market > ShopRite > Village Market > Garden of Eden Marketplace > Ashley Marketplace Cooperative:  unknown Location:  1 S Orange Ave, South Orange, NJ Photographed:  September 5, 2025 We return to downtown South Orange Village where the former Ashley Marketplace has been closed for renovations and it's soon to reopen as Village Marketplace. Ashley Marketplace had a several-years-long decline before finally closing in March, and now it's soon to reopen " sometime after Labor Day " under this new brand. It's not clear whether the ownership of the store changed during this transition, but the store is getting some much-needed renovation inside. This store is located right at the train station in bustling downtown South Orange, a small suburban town just outside Newark. There's definitely a market for a grocer here, but Ashley couldn't execute what it needed to be. ...

Ashley Marketplace Open: 2013-March 2025 Owner:  Cheol Kim Previous Tenants:  Village Super Market > ShopRite > Village Market > Garden of Eden Marketplace Cooperative:  Krasdale Foods Location:  1 South Orange Ave, South Orange, NJ Photographed:  March 16, 2025 After my latest visit to South Orange's Ashley Marketplace , it was pretty clear that the end was near. And the store did in fact close recently, I believe around the end of February or beginning of March. A handwritten sign on the front door informs customers that it's temporarily closed. I don't know if that's true, but a colleague who lives in town told me he (unintentionally) visited the store on its last day in business and talked to the manager, who told him they're closing for renovations to (in his words) "build a real supermarket." Hard to tell what that means, but we'll just have to wait and see! It's unclear if the store has been sold, but as you can see in the above im...

Ashley Marketplace Opened: 2013 Owner:  Cheol Kim Previous Tenants:  Village Super Market > ShopRite > Village Super Market > Garden of Eden Marketplace Cooperative:  Krasdale Foods Location:  1 South Orange Ave, South Orange, NJ Photographed:  January 23, 2025 A couple towns over from SuperFresh Food World , which we're also seeing this weekend, we return once again to Ashley Marketplace in South Orange. (The first picture, by the way, is from October but the rest are from last month.) While SuperFresh seems to have picked up significant volume since it first opened and is now completing its latest update with new fixtures and lighting, Ashley continues what I can only describe as its yearslong slide into oblivion. I first noticed the store declining way back in 2022 , when certain service departments had closed up and others were decidedly diminutive. Since then, the store has been barely alive, and my most recent visit revealed, well, almost nothing...

Ashley Marketplace Opened: 2013 Owner: Cheol Kim Previous Tenants:  Village Super Market > ShopRite > Village Super Market > Garden of Eden Marketplace Cooperative: Krasdale Foods Location:  1 South Orange Ave, South Orange, NJ Photographed: October 27, 2024 We're back at the Ashley Marketplace in downtown South Orange, which we last visited in the summer of 2022 . Once a beautiful gourmet market, the store has noticeably declined even further from that 2022 update and appears to be close to closing. On my most recent visit last weekend, stock was very thin throughout the store, although there were some small improvements -- namely, the empty former seafood counter has been removed and one small piece of it is now next to the meat department. Both seafood and meat were pretty fully stocked, although several refrigerators around the store are filled with random products. The grocery shelving was about 50% stocked, and much of the space was taken up by more mainstre...

Ashley Marketplace Owner: Cheol Kim Opened:  2013 Cooperative:  none Location:  1 South Orange Ave, South Orange, NJ Photographed:  June 2022 We return to Ashley Marketplace after first seeing it back in the summer of 2018. Unfortunately, the past four years have not been kind to the gourmet supermarket and cafe, with a visit last week showing the store clearly struggling. By the way, the store closed for a few weeks in 2019 "for renovation," but reopened shortly thereafter with no apparent changes. At some point between the summer of 2020 and the summer of 2022, the store did in fact make some major changes to its layout and selection. We're going to take a trip through the somewhat mazelike store from the back entrance, facing the parking garage. The produce department is actually looking really good with the newly streamlined setup, until we start noticing the shelves and shelves of bottled water in what used to be a produce cooler on the right. Also, oddly eno...