The Market Report

Amazon Fresh Opened: November 7, 2024 Owner:  Amazon Previous Tenants:  Pathmark > Fairway Market Cooperative:  none Location:  1510 US-46, Woodland Park, NJ Photographed:  September 18, 2025 Amazon Fresh continues to flounder in its quest for supermarket domination. They're closing their entire UK operation (although a handful of stores will continue on as Whole Foods locations) while closing four stores in California and one in New York , under a year after it opened. With that context in mind, I thought it would be interesting to revisit the Woodland Park store  (see here also) to check in on how their operations are doing at the remaining stores. The answer: badly. This store is large, larger than most Amazon Fresh locations, and it's clear Amazon is struggling enormously to fill the sales floor. Something I can't say I've seen before: these posters in the produce department, covering up parts of the refrigeration that aren't full. And there are a...

ShopRite Opened:  April 9, 2025 Owner:  Village Super Market Previous Tenants:  assorted non-grocery tenants Cooperative:  Wakefern Food Corp. Location:  1701 US-22, Watchung, NJ Photographed:  July 23, 2025 We're back at the Watchung ShopRite to check out what the heck is going on. To recap: Village Super Market owns about 30 ShopRite stores, and about 10 more under the Fairway and Gourmet Garage brands in NYC. They brought the Fairway and Gourmet Garage brands into some of their other locations, with Fairway-branded coffee, cheese, and bakery departments, and Gourmet Garage-branded prepared foods. Then, at the end of May, Village very abruptly removed all of those branded items and departments. The Gourmet Garage-branded prepared foods are now packaged with labels devoid of any branding at all, and the Fairway and Gourmet Garage brands have been meticulously removed from all Village ShopRite stores. In Watchung , and possibly Old Bridge , signs reading "V...

Amazon Fresh Opened: November 7, 2024 Owner:  Amazon Previous Tenants:  Pathmark > Fairway Market Cooperative:  none Location:  1510 US-46, Woodland Park, NJ Photographed:  June 18, 2025 Amazon Fresh has lowered its prices! Their pricing strategy has been... confusing at best , but in the last few weeks and months Amazon Fresh has introduced a new ad campaign touting the new lower prices. And yes, they are actually much, much lower. I didn't do a full price comparison -- I took only a quick walk through the store -- but several staple items were quite low. A two-pound box of strawberries caught my attention at $3.79 (not on sale, compared to $5.99 at ShopRite across the street ). Signage is up inside the store and on the storefront advertising the new lower prices in a very easy-to-read red, and a matching graphic is used for Amazon Saver products, such as these on an endcap. Now here's an interesting comparison. Organic Valley lactose free milk is not a pro...

Amazon Fresh Opened: November 7, 2024 Owner:  Amazon Previous Tenants:  Pathmark (1970s-2010) > Fairway Market (2011-2020) Cooperative:  none Location:  1510 US-46, Woodland Park, NJ Photographed:  November 8, 2024 After a long time of keeping locations dormant -- mostly built-out but not yet opened -- Amazon Fresh has resumed opening stores. They've refined the format, they say, and have redesigned the stores to be more appealing. I have pretty consistently disliked Amazon Fresh in the past -- but I gotta say, this is by far the best store of theirs I've visited. And if they're moving in this direction, I won't be disappointed. The roughly 60,000 square foot store (one of the larger Amazon Fresh locations) opened on Thursday morning and I visited on Friday morning. It's a space originally occupied by Pathmark, later Fairway until their 2020 bankruptcy. Amazon Fresh announced they were moving in at the same time here as they did in Paramus , also a former...