The Market Report

We're here once again at the Fair Ridge Mall in Fairview, NJ to return to the store that we saw: As a Key Food Marketplace in May 2017 , As a SuperFresh in June 2018 , and most recently, As a Freshway in December 2018 . Note that all of those stores were owned by the same person, Kevin Kim, a supermarket owner out of Queens. Kim has at this point sold or closed all of his stores except this one. We've seen his store in Plainsboro  and Belleville , and a few of his other stores will be coming soon to the blog. As I mentioned, this is his last store and it's pretty obvious that this one is closing as well. Many of the shelves are empty around the store, but where it was most obvious is the meat department -- so often a centerpiece department that makes up for most of the store's perishable sales. Well, you'll notice this store's service butcher is closed and covered over with paper from the circular the store no longer uses. Oh, and although the...

Perhaps you recall seeing the Food Bazaar in Fairview back in December 2016. No? Well then, refresh your memory here . Just four blocks south of the Food Bazaar is a much smaller supermarket, Kikos Supermarket, which is owned by independent grocer Felix Beltran. Previously, he and his family had owned CTown Supermarkets in West New York and Clifton (in the Styertowne Plaza where CVS is now) along with a few others. Meanwhile, the La Placita Supermarket * in Union City was previously a Kikos. Today, it appears that this location in Fairview is the only store owned by the Beltran family; it was previously a Fine Fare that closed in 2000. *A note on that post. I had written that the original Kikos was here in Fairview and the Kikos II was in Union City. I actually had that reversed. For an idea of the layout, you enter to the right on the front wall. Produce is in the front right corner with checkouts to the left. Dairy continues along the first aisle with butcher and deli in an al...

Quick Bay Ridge interruption... We've been to this store a few times now, first seeing it as a Key Food Marketplace in photos from May 2016, then revisiting it as a SuperFresh with photos taken in April 2018. The Food Basics-turned-Key Food Marketplace-turned-SuperFresh has now been turned Freshway, along with another one of owner Kevin Kim's locations in Staten Island, NY at 375 Tompkins Ave. On the outside, not much has changed in the past two and a half years. The store is still sporting its Food Basics entrance sign and awning, but it now has a real, lit logo (if a slightly off-center one). If you zoom in, you can see that the store is now featuring Fine Fare sale posters in the windows, as Freshway is run with General Trading of Carlstadt, NJ, which also runs Fine Fare. Heading in, we find that surprisingly, most of the signs have actually been updated to the Freshway logo... Okay, I didn't say updated well, I said updated. Either way, the store is stil...

Coming back to this store in Fairview, NJ. I visited for the first time over the summer of 2016, when it first opened as a Key Food Marketplace. In May 2017, we saw a full tour of the store, plus some pictures from Facebook of it as a SuperFresh. I decided to go back in April 2018 to see if anything really had changed. As we'll see, some things had. First and most importantly, a real sign has been installed on the awning. The carts have gotten...stranger, since my cart was a Winn-Dixie cart with full logos and even a store directory. Entering, we find that the grand aisle looks mostly the same. The promotional Food Basics signs with Key Food stickers have been replaced with real SuperFresh signs. In the grand aisle, at least. The produce here is excellent, and cheap. The nearby Food Bazaar's produce is just excellent. The seafood department looks virtually the same as well. It's nice to see that it has not been downsized. The sushi counter and juice bar are g...