The Market Report

Stop & Shop Opened:  ca. 2000 Previous Tenants:  Mayfair Foodtown > Edwards Location:  219 Elm St, Westfield, NJ Photographed:  June 2020 Easily the nicest Stop & Shop exterior I've ever seen! Although as we'll see, up close it is in worse repair than it looks. This approximately 20,000 square foot store also has to be one of the smallest Stop & Shop locations out there (it's part of our Old And Small New Jersey Stop & Shop Locations series; see Jersey City here ). Built as a Mayfair Foodtown and later taken over by Edwards, this store was custom-designed to fit in with the small-town atmosphere of downtown Westfield. This is the side facing Elm Street. The storefront faces the parking lot, and this side is almost invisible from the street with all the vegetation. Sign facing Elm Street. And this is the only sign on the storefront facing the parking lot. You enter in the middle of the storefront and turn left to enter de...

Trader Joe's Opened:  1997 Previous Tenants:  A&P Location:  155 Elm St, Westfield, NJ Photographed:  August 2019 It's time for our first store tour of a Trader Joe's here on The Market Report! (We'll have some more, but not for a long time.) This 15,000 square foot store was originally a street-facing A&P with parking lining the side, but Trader Joe's entrance is now on the side facing the parking lot. Check out some more history here . The original storefront looks to have been significantly altered. Most Trader Joe's are pretty much the same, except for minor differences in layout. This one has dairy lining the left side wall with produce in the middle. The aisles diagonally fill the center of the store, with frozen foods on the far side. In the front corner of the store is a liquor department; under New Jersey's liquor laws, a corporation can only operate two liquor stores in the state. This is therefore one of only two Trade...

The Food Emporium Owner:  Ki Hyung (Kevin) Kim Opened:  2016-2017 Previous Tenants:  Pathmark Later Tenants:  Superfresh > LIDL Cooperative:  Key Food Stores Location:  10 South Ave, Garwood, NJ Photographed:  August 2016, April 2017, July 2017, and November 2020 It's time now for another store owned by Kevin Kim, whose Belleville store we most recently saw. The first Food Emporium to open in New Jersey, this store was considered an alternative to the nearby ShopRite , which has an insanely crowded and badly-designed parking lot. Unfortunately, there's a reason the Garwood ShopRite is always packed: it's the best supermarket in the area. There's also a Kings that took over a former Stop & Shop just about half a mile west on South Avenue from this Food Emporium. That'll be our next stop! That tough competition combined with this store's clearly incompetent management team led this to be, like Belleville or Fairview...