The Market Report

And this time I actually have worthwhile updates. Livingston We are returning for the first time in a while to visit the Livingston Kings, where things have been happening very slowly and sporadically. I still can't tell if a true renovation is coming soon here, but we do have a few minor updates to see. First off, the whole store has been reset, with the most major change happening in the first aisle. Here's the produce department, along the front wall of the store, prior to the most recent reset... And afterwards... (The above picture and all subsequent pictures in this post were taken just a few days ago, 3/7/22.) A couple of changes of note here. Oh, and don't forget, we actually have the floor plan for this store here , which I'd recommend taking a look at. The most significant is that the produce cases have been removed from the left side of the first aisle, and the refrigerators are all now on the right side, which is the front wall of the store. What I'm not...

Summit We return to our updates at Kings Food Markets with a look at what's been going on at two Kings stores here in northern NJ. First let's stop by the Summit store, which we last saw an update of in August and the original tour was back in June . Not much to see in the way of changes (the above photo is from January 2021 by the way, two days before ACME officially took ownership), but we do have four self-checkouts added to the tiny store... Four self-checkouts plus three service registers, which I believe is down from four full service registers. Not that I ever saw this store with more than two registers open anyway. A side note is that the future of this store may be in question as the city has considered this site for a public housing development, although I do believe that development will be happening elsewhere. Focusing on the liquor store... Note that the price tags on the alcohol are different from the standard Kings/Albertsons ones , suggesting that in fact the l...

There's been a bit of work going on at the Kings locations since ACME took over the chain in January 2021. Not much happened between then and roughly this July, when stuff finally started changing (though admittedly not all that much, which has been quite disappointing to me). I've gotten to quite a few of the locations to investigate the changes. Here's an (overly?) exhaustive rundown of changes to stores we've already seen... Montclair (pictured above) As of July 12, the aisle markers had been replaced -- setting the change at some point between December 2020 and July 2021. I'm unsure whether that was done right before or right after the ACME acquisition. Also as of July 12, the price tags had been switched over to the ACME/Albertsons type, and five self-checkouts had been installed. See my tour of Montclair here . Verona Verona's POS system update/self-checkout installation was completed on July 15, 2021. Five self-checkouts were installed and I assume the pr...