The Market Report

Bravo Supermarkets Owner: Juan Marte Opened:  2008 under current ownership Previous Tenants:  Food Fair > Foodtown > CTown Cooperative:  Krasdale Location:  275 George St, New Brunswick, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 Our final New Brunswick store tour is here at the 8600 square foot Bravo in downtown New Brunswick! Not a huge store, but actually the largest store in downtown New Brunswick since SuperFresh closed in 2019. It started out as a wonderfully midcentury modern Food Fair and later became a Foodtown owned by the Davidsons. They closed the Foodtown in the 80s or early 90s, I believe, and intended to convert the store to a liquor store (notice that a tiny Davidson's Liquors remains next door). The city of New Brunswick instead subsidized the proposed CTown to replace the Foodtown and assisted the owners in opening, leading the Davidsons to sue, arguing that the use of the space as a grocery store threatened their existing business at their other Foo...

Original Tenant: The Fresh Grocer Address: 100 Kirkpatrick St, New Brunswick, NJ (aka 95 Paterson St) Opened:  2012 Closed:  2014 Later Tenants:  Key Food (2015-2017) > SuperFresh (2017-2019) Photographed:  July 2020 Welcome to Wellness Plaza, a highly-touted development in the center of New Brunswick that can be described as, at best, a complex with no real effect in downtown, and at worst, a largely-abandoned, expensive eyesore that detracts from the thriving city. The complex opened in 2012 with an RWJ (Robert Wood Johnson, a division of RWJ Barnabas, a healthcare provider affiliated with Rutgers University, I believe) Fitness Center, a large parking garage, and a 50,000 square foot supermarket. It was a location of Philadelphia chain The Fresh Grocer, which is located in several similar developments in and around Philadelphia. Almost immediately after this store opened, The Fresh Grocer's owners left the small and relatively weak cooperative Great Valu Marke...

CTown Supermarkets Owner: Edward Taveras Opened:  2000 Previous Tenants:  Xtra Savings Supermarket (2000-2017) Cooperative:  Krasdale Location:  333 Suydam St, New Brunswick, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 At just under 5000 square feet, today's store tour is slightly larger than the other store we're seeing today. It operated for over 15 years as the Xtra Savings Supermarket, which is still the co-branded name, but in 2017 the store also gained a CTown affiliation under the same owners. It's likely that the store was remodeled around the same time, with a new flooring and some new fixtures. In any event, the interior is looking very good. By the way, there was previously a much larger CTown in downtown New Brunswick for several decades, which rebranded to Bravo in 2011 under the same owners. We'll be touring that store as it is today in a few days. The first aisle here contains produce in the front 2/3 or so, and meat in the back 1/3. Service deli and butcher li...

ALDI Opened: unknown Previous Tenants:  none Location:  6 Van Dyke Ave, New Brunswick, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 I will admit that ALDI is not my favorite grocery store. However, I do certainly find their stores attractive and easy to shop, and they're one of the better discount chains I've been to. This 17,000 square foot store on the border of New Brunswick and Somerset is an older store that's been more recently renovated and is looking quite good now. The layout is pretty standard for ALDI. Produce is in the first half of the first aisle, with baked goods in the back. Dairy lines the back wall, with meat/deli/frozen in the last aisle. The only way we can tell inside that this is an older, renovated store instead of a new one is its flooring, being tile instead of polished concrete in the newer stores. I very much like the backlit pictures of food around the store. This is a very attractive decor package brought to us by, of course, the talented folks at Off the Wal...