The Market Report

Sprouts Farmers Market Opened: October 3, 2025 Owner:  publicly traded Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  none Location:  1002 St Georges Ave, Avenel, NJ Photographed:  October 5, 2025 Greetings from a brand-new Sprouts! This is currently Sprouts' northernmost location on the east coast, although stores are on the way on Long Island and in Westchester County in New York. This newly-built location in the Avenel section of Woodbridge, NJ anchors a strip mall that's still in progress. Sprouts definitely chose a tough location here: it's a high-profile location, with easy access from several major roads and highways, but it's also within a couple miles of a couple of ShopRites, a Wegmans, a LIDL, an ALDI, a SuperFresh, a Walmart, a Fresh Grocer, and a number of independent stores. Still, there's some distance to a dedicated natural foods store: the closest stores are two Whole Foods in Clark and Metuchen about five miles away each, but that's a distance in the...

The Fresh Grocer of Colonia Owner: David Maniaci / Nicholas Markets Opened:  2020 Previous Tenants:  Stop & Shop > Circus Foodtown > Nicholas Foodtown Cooperative:  Wakefern Food Corp. Location:  510 Inman Ave, Colonia, NJ Photographed:  December 2021 It's time to check out the awesome remodel at The Fresh Grocer of Colonia, which is finished! The store held its official grand reopening a few months ago, and we most recently saw it in progress in July 2021 . You can also see the "before" pictures there. Today, we enter the totally redone store to the sushi and sandwich counters, which face the entrance. Deli/prepared foods take up the aisle to the right, with produce and seafood in the aisle to the left. A butcher on the back wall faces a cheese counter in the deli island, with frozen foods in the first grocery aisle. Meat and then dairy lines the back wall, with dairy also in the last aisle and bakery in the front right corner. These renovations make...

SuperFresh Owner: Howard Lee / Food World Supermarkets Opened:  2020 Previous Tenants:  ShopRite > Pathmark Cooperative:  Key Food Stores Location:  95 New Brunswick Ave, Hopelawn, Woodbridge, NJ Photographed:  June & July 2020, February 2021 We're here at the southeastern corner of Woodbridge Township, in the Hopelawn section, to tour the SuperFresh that opened here in July 2020. As dedicated readers will remember, I attended the store's grand opening, which we saw in a Special Report back in August 2020. The building is 46,000 sqaure feet (plus a 5000 square foot liquor store, seen to the left here). It was built in the mid- to late-1960s as a Supermarkets General-owned ShopRite, and converted to Pathmark in 1968. Following Pathmark's closure, it was announced that about 30,000 square feet of the store was to be taken over by "D Town Market Fresh" -- almost definitely the same owners as B Town in Elizabeth , especially since they were announced at the...