The Market Report

Universal Food Markets Opened:  December 2024 Owner:  Mukesh Patel Previous Tenants:  Super El Rey Supermarket Cooperative:  Key Food Stores Location:  80 3rd St, Elizabeth, NJ Photographed:  March 29, 2024 and May 8, 2025 Greetings from Elizabethport, the waterfront neighborhood of Elizabeth, New Jersey, just south of Newark. (In fact, the Newark Airport -- in the news lately because of its extreme delays and flight traffic controller shortage -- is about half in Newark and half in Elizabeth.) Elizabethport is separated from the rest of the city by interstate 95, and is bounded by industrial areas to the north and south but is itself a largely residential neighborhood. It has two small supermarkets, a Superfood Marketplace on First Street and a couple blocks north, this small Key Food-affiliated supermarket on Third Street. 2024 The roughly 7000 square foot store had been Super El Rey for a long time, and possibly other supermarkets before that, but I don...

We've spent plenty of time in Elizabeth, NJ, but we're back to check out some old family photos! My grandmother had literal boxes upon boxes of original pictures anywhere from 1950 or so up until recent years, and these come from the earlier side of that. First we have my great-grandmother and my aunt outside the local A&P, although I'm not positive exactly where this was. I do know that it was an A&P, though. Now a picture of my aunt outside of some store, although I'm not sure if it's the same one... I love these stacks of groceries in the window! Now we're headed back up to Massachusetts tomorrow for some more historical photos.

It's not too often that I do updates of Food Bazaars, since most of the ones I visit regularly are fairly new. But we have a couple of changes at Elizabeth and Red Hook that are worth checking out... Elizabeth The above picture of the Elizabeth Food Bazaar isn't a recent one (you can see the snow), but it's a very nice sunset shot and I think it's my only picture showing the whole store from across the street. The Elizabeth Food Bazaar opened in 2016 in a former Pathmark, which actually opened in 1967 as a ShopRite and was converted the following year. You can see my extensive past coverage here , here , and here . While the store was extensively remodeled before its reopening, most of the supermarket retained its Pathmark tile (just with the signature blue Path to Savings-era portions removed). Only the grand aisle was switched to polished concrete. This month, a lot of work has been going on at the store, including refinishing all of the flooring to polished concrete...

ShopRite of Elizabeth Owner: Robert Sumas / Village Super Market Opened:  1991 Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  Wakefern Food Corp. Location:  865 W Grand St, Elizabeth, NJ Photographed:  August 2021 We return to the ShopRite of Elizabeth, another old favorite, to check out the additional progress on their remodel. In our July update , I had wondered what would be placed next to the customer service counter on the front-end near the entrance, and it turns out the pharmacy was being moved to that spot. This is not an improvement. First of all, there's a very odd setup (which you can see a little of in the below photo) in which the pharmacy counter is actually behind a row of self-checkouts, making flow very inconsistent for customers leaving the pharmacy. Second, the pharmacy is now literally as far in the store from health and beauty items as it can be -- instead, it's opposite a counter for sushi and subs. That doesn't make any sense to me. It does look n...