The Market Report

Amazon Fresh Opening: TBA Owner:  Amazon Previous Tenants:  Stop & Shop > Foodtown Cooperative:  none Location:  225 Ridgedale Ave, Cedar Knolls, NJ Photographed:  January 21 and 31, 2025 Another new Amazon Fresh is on its way ! The growing-yet-struggling chain is pushing forward with certain planned locations and it seems the former Foodtown in Cedar Knolls will be up next. Amazon has remodeled the building and expanded it to around 45,000 square feet, and you can see the facade is a bit different from the previous generation of stores. There remain a number of Amazon Fresh stores fully built, but not yet opened, across the country, while others have been sold or canceled . Amazon Fresh's strategy -- if they have one -- has yet to reveal itself to the public, and meanwhile, their execution is confusing and haphazard. So we'll see, because bigger transformations have happened before. It's entirely possible that, with a recent management change , Amaz...

Original Tenant:  Michas Brothers Foodtown Address: 350 N Main St, Wharton, NJ Opened:  unknown Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  subdivided - Wharton Farm Market & Rite Aid > Walgreens Photographed:  July 2020 Interesting stuff here in Wharton just north of route 80, and we saw the ShopRite just south of route 80 yesterday. This 25,000 square foot anchor to the Wharton Mall was constructed probably in the 1970s by the Michas Brothers, later Manyfoods, whose other stores we saw a while back also. Probably when Manyfoods went out of business around 2003, this store would've been closed (and also not sold, likely hurting from the new nearby ShopRite). Looks like I scared off those two cars who were in the first picture. Anyway, around that time the Foodtown was cut in half, with Rite Aid (now Walgreens) taking the right half and a farmers market taking the left half. There isn't much left from Foodtown, but the Wharton Farm Market (aka the Wharton Farm Pro...

Original Tenant:  Foodtown Address:  451 Ridgedale Ave, East Hanover, NJ Opened:  unknown Closed:  1999 Later Tenants: CVS Photographed: March 2019 Our third East Hanover store today is this former Foodtown in downtown East Hanover separated from the ACME and Pathmark on route 10. The 12,600 square foot store was built in the 1950s or so by a Foodtown owner. JoshAustin610 calls it Ross's Foodtown, but this store was also by the end of its life a Michas Brothers/Manyfoods location whose Whippany ( earlier and later ) and Cedar Knolls ( earlier and later ) locations we recently saw which all were closed or sold by 2003. Oddly, this CVS lacks a sign on the side of the store with the only sign facing out to the street. I believe there was an older store here in town, but I don't know for sure. There doesn't seem to have been a replacement for this store, and it lasted all the way until almost the end of Manyfoods. Tomorrow, we move up to 46 in the eastern part of ...

Original Tenant: Foodtown Address: 831 NJ-10, Whippany, Hanover, NJ Opened:  1991 Closed:  ca. 2000 Later Tenants:  Pathmark (ca. 2000-2011) > Farmtastic Supermarket (2014-2015) Photographed:  June 2020 Part 2 of our Pine Plaza coverage deals with this larger supermarket, built in 1991 by Michas Brothers Foodtown as a replacement for a much smaller store in a former A&P next door, which is part 1 . Michas Brothers (later Manyfoods) sold the 35,000 square foot store to Pathmark around 2000, which in turn closed in 2011 as the 20-year lease expired. In Cedar Knolls , we saw a Michas > Manyfoods > LaRacca Foodtown which then closed in early 2014. Well, a few months after the LaRaccas closed Cedar Knolls, they opened this location as Farmtastic Supermarket which lasted all of about 18 months before closing for good in mid to late 2015. As I mention in the A&P post, Pine Plaza is in an extensive redevelopment process which involved clearing out all of t...

Original Tenant: Stop & Shop Address: 225 Ridgedale Ave, Cedar Knolls, Hanover, NJ Opened: 1973 Closed:  1980 Later Tenants:  Foodtown (1980-2014) Photographed:  June 2020 What's today the Cedar Knolls Plaza was originally a small enclosed mall, the Morris County Mall, featuring a Bradlees at the north end and a Stop & Shop at the south end. The Bradlees today is a Walmart, which is not a Supercenter, and the Stop & Shop became a Michas Brothers Foodtown in 1980. In 2002, the supermarket was switched to Manyfoods, also owned by the Michas brothers, and remained under the name Foodtown; the same year, William Louttit purchased Manyfoods from the Michas family. The following year, Manyfoods was liquidated, closing its River Vale and Wanaque stores (and in fact, I believe the latter briefly became a CTown) while Cedar Knolls was purchased by the LaRacca brothers, who owned several other nearby Foodtowns. The 30,000 square foot supermarket finally closed in 201...