The Market Report

ACME Markets Opened: 2016 Previous Tenants:  A&P (1990s-2015) Location:  550 Myrtle Ave, Boonton, NJ Photographed:  July 2022 Today's update is a quick stop at the Boonton ACME. We toured the store with 2020 pictures in 2021 (clarification: pictures from the year 2020, not a store tour with a total of 2,020 pictures; that would be excessive, even for me). Not much has changed since the store's opening in 2016 or that tour, but the produce department was reset at some point with new fixtures. It looks... fine. I was hoping they'd replace the flooring here at some point. Check out the difference in produce between Kenilworth (old floor) and Warren (new floor). I still think this decor is also... fine, but rather bland. Compared with what's going on at other Albertsons divisions, this is not particularly impressive. And we see some new refrigerators in the deli department. Again, not all that exciting, but pretty much just the same fixture updates we've seen at...

Let's take a look at what's been going on at our local Kings Food Markets, starting with the only store that's having any real changes... Livingston We begin our return to Livingston Kings with another unsuccessful Summer Entertaining display (remember that last time , it was toilet paper). And this time it's laundry detergent. Now for the real updates, in chronological order: July 6:  Beverage case in the back between bakery and the future kosher department is beginning to thin out in preparation for its move to the front-end where greeting cards used to be. Below is the new case which was installed behind the self checkouts. July 8:  After briefly disappearing, greeting cards have been moved around the corner from where they used to be. See the track lighting on the ceiling to the right of the wall below? That's where the new beverage case is, and where the greeting cards used to be. Also July 8:  The old beverage case was removed from the back and the kosher depa...

Kings Food Markets Opened: late 1990s Previous Tenants:  ACME > Foodtown > Edwards previously on site, demolished Location:  115 Hawkins Pl, Boonton, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 and July 2021 Well well well, would you look at this? It's a Kings that I actually kind of like! This store was long a favorite of mine and seems to be very well-run. It's about a mile and a half from today's ACME (and former IGA ), and one of the reasons -- if not the only reason -- that ACME purchased Kings for such a high price was to strengthen their position in towns like Boonton, which has only an ACME and a Kings (plus an un-supercentered Walmart). The store today is around 27,000 square feet and was expanded from an original 22,000 square foot building. This was, I believe, the final Kings to receive the Where Inspiration Strikes remodel in 2016 . The signature Inspiration Station pictured there has been eliminated, as we saw most of the most deluxe features similarly removed in Gi...

ACME Markets Opened: 2016 Previous Tenants:  A&P (ca. 1997-2015) Location:  550 Myrtle Ave, Boonton, NJ Photographed:  January 2020 We are here just to the northeast of downtown Boonton to tour the ACME, formerly A&P, which is the largest supermarket in town at just under 50,000 square feet. This A&P was built in the late 90s, putting the nearby IGA out of business, and then closed in 2015. It was not part of the initial group of stores purchased by ACME from A&P, but was later added to the list along with Patterson, NY. The store was closed before reopening several months later as a fully-renovated Quality Built ACME, although we'll see there's still plenty left from A&P. We enter to the grand aisle with a front-corner Starbucks, something that was added after the store opened. Check out an early post from Acme Style here . The layout is almost entirely left from A&P, with produce lining the right side of the store. Deli and seafood are in the b...