The Market Report

Original Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 1060 US-9, Parlin, NJ Opened:  1969 Closed:  1980s Later Tenants:  Petco Photographed:  February 2021 It's our final day of the Old Bridge & Freehold group! And we've got not one, not two, but three stores here on our last day. The first is at the southern end of the Sayre Woods Shopping Center here in Parlin, just to the north of Old Bridge, to visit an 18,000 square foot former ACME that's now a Petco and one smaller storefront that was unoccupied at the time of my visit. It's been extensively disguised through remodels, as has our other former supermarket in this mall. Between those two is the operating grocery store we're looking at today . And once you've read all of those posts, that is all for this group! Tomorrow we embark on something new just to the north...

Original Tenant: Grand Union Address: 1004 US-9, Old Bridge, NJ Opened:  1950s Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  Marshalls Photographed:  February 2021 It seems that the right half (about 17,000 square feet) of this Marshalls was originally a Grand Union. Now it looks like there's nothing really special about this former Grand Union, which shares a mall with today's other stores, the former ACME and current Bhavani Foods in the Sayre Woods Shopping Center. But if we look carefully, we can see that the metal tower sign to the far right is nearly identical to the one we saw in the historical photo of the Union location . That wraps up our Old Bridge & Freehold group, so come back tomorrow to check out the next group!

Original Tenant:  Pathmark Address:  1043 US-9, Old Bridge, NJ Opened:  1990s Closed:  2015 Later Tenants: subdivided Photographed: February 2021 Our second post today is kinda the same as the first post. See a look at the ALDI here , and now we're going to take a closer look at the rest of the building. The 58,000 square foot building is a 1990s-era Pathmark Super Center, which you can see Acme Style's coverage of at the end of their post here . As we'll see, the former Pathmark space is remarkably intact six years after closing... ...although much of the facade has been repainted to disguise its red, white, and blue Pathmark colors. The structure of the facade is still mostly intact though, with just a few cosmetic changes over on the ALDI side. In this post we're going to be focusing on the other half of the store, which is even more original inside... Here's a look at the dividing wall with the new ALDI to the left of the wall on the left side. Customer servic...

ALDI Opened: 2019 Previous Tenants:  Pathmark Location:  1043 US-9, Old Bridge, NJ Photographed:  February 2021 We last saw a Pathmark-turned-ALDI in Hazlet, and it's time for another one here in Old Bridge! The approximately 24,000 square foot store takes part of a 58,000 square foot former Pathmark, which we're taking a closer look at on Grocery Archaeology today as well. As we can see, the bones of the Pathmark facade remain, especially on the right side of the storefront. Again, check out our Pathmark post for that. Tomorrow we're going out with a bang for the last day of our Old Bridge - Freehold group, with three stores in the same strip mall across the street -- two stores on Grocery Archaeology and one on The Independent Edition . Stay tuned!

ShopRite of Old Bridge Owner: Robert Sumas / Village Super Market Opened:  2012 under current ownership Previous Tenants:  Shakoor ShopRite Cooperative:  Wakefern Food Corp. Location:  2239 US-9, Old Bridge, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 We have finally arrived at the wonderful classic Old Bridge ShopRite, a 70s-era store that replaced an older store just up route 9 at Ernston Road. Up until 2012, the store was owned by Charles Shakoor, whose brother Jack Shakoor owns four Foodtowns (Caldwell, Wayne, Bloomfield, and North Arlington). Charles Shakoor died in May 2020, but the store had been sold eight years earlier to Springfield, NJ-based Village Super Market, which today owns about 30 ShopRites, five Fairway Markets, and three Gourmet Garages. Village created plans to move the store just to the north in a development on route 9 which has been held up, so for now, this dinosaur still remains in operation. It has a certain charm for sure, but it's long past time f...

Original Tenant:  ACME Markets Address: 2500 US-9, Old Bridge, NJ Opened:  1962 Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  February 2021 A quick look at the former ACME just across the highway from today's other post, Garden Farm . Acme Style covered this store along with the existing Old Bridge ACME here (and see my post of the current Old Bridge ACME here ). It's worth noting that the existing ACME was an A&P until 2015, so that was not a replacement for this store which probably closed by the 90s. The facade on the 20,500 square foot store hides the pitched roof, which is also hidden in the back... Very clearly a former supermarket. Tomorrow, we'll be touring our next store just to the north along US-9 on  The Market Report !

ACME Markets Opened: 2015 Previous Tenants:  A&P Location:  3500 US-9, Old Bridge, NJ Photographed:  December 2020 Does this store look a little familiar? It might, and that's because it's one of two stores built in this model by A&P in the mid-90s. The other one, Kenilworth , we toured back in June. At 57,000 square feet, this one is a little smaller than Kenilworth, and it also was renovated to Fresh 1.0 instead of 2.0. Dan Asnis has some great pictures of the store as an A&P and in its closing days here . ACME has not yet remodeled the store to Quality Built, but they have replaced some fixtures and most importantly, the lighting in this part of the store. If you look here , you can see that A&P had much more focused lighting. Now I was never in this store as an A&P, but judging by the other locations, the problem was that the stores were very attractive but poorly maintained, so those lights would burn out and the stores would always come off as d...