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...

Sprouts Farmers Market Opened: June 7, 2024 Previous Tenants:  A&P (1990s-2015) Cooperative:  none Location:  327 NJ-35, Aberdeen, NJ Photographed:  June 22, 2024 It's been a while since we've seen a Sprouts! The Phoenix-based natural food store chain has just opened its third New Jersey location, this one near the shore in central Jersey. (The other two, in Marlton and part of a former SuperFresh in Haddonfield , are both in Philadelphia suburbs.) I was really excited to find the Marlton location by chance, but having returned to Sprouts a few more times in the years since, I'm just not sure the store is quite as good as I remember. Still, it's a nice place with a lot of good products. But I think overall, it falls into the uncomfortable middle ground of being too high-priced and not being specialized enough. A dedicated natural food store, such as many of the independent natural food stores we've toured, can price its products a little higher because the sel...

I hope you're having a great weekend, and happy June! Similar to what I did ( twice ) in May, here's a roundup of some recent supermarket news, focused on the things I've been able to get out and see myself. (By the way, I report a lot of this as I learn about it on my X/Twitter page , if you don't already follow me there.) In alphabetical order... ACME Markets Old Bridge, NJ The ACME in Old Bridge, NJ has gotten a renovation, but it's clearly struggling. Read more here . Amazon Fresh Parlin, NJ A fully constructed Amazon Fresh is sitting vacant in Parlin, 39,000 square feet formerly occupied by Modell's Sporting Goods. Work stalled as far back as about a year and a half ago , but the store looks ready to open any day now -- minus the sign, of course. The sign was installed and subsequently removed in Woodland Park. Up in Connecticut, a Big Y opened in an acquired (never opened) Amazon Fresh. Here in Parlin, the strip mall also has an Indian grocer called Bh...