The Market Report

LIDL Opened:  2020 Previous Tenants:  A&P Location:  500 Milltown Rd, North Brunswick, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 I caught the 28,000 square foot LIDL in about half of a former A&P here in New Brunswick just a few weeks before it opened. In fact, I am a little ashamed to admit I hadn't even heard that LIDL was considering this location and was hoping to find it still as an abandoned A&P . Read more about LIDL's opening here . Tomorrow, we'll be taking a look at our last North Brunswick store, about a mile to the northwest. Come back here to check it out!

ACME Markets Opened: early 2000s Previous Tenants:  none Location:  10 Ryders Ln, Milltown, NJ Photographed:  February 2021 It's time for The Market Report to visit Milltown! This ACME has long been speculated to close, but finally (and coincidentally, this was announced on the day I wrote this post back in April) has been announced to close no later than April 2022. Acme Style, even back in 2013 , started to document the store's decline which has clearly continued up to my visit. Despite that, the store is still looking very good even with its age. The pharmacy closed in 2010 and introduced that dark brown patch on the facade where the Sav-On logo was. The patch also appears on the street signs, and my assumption is that the lack of investment reflects a general understanding that the store wasn't long for this world. Let's head in. We find all of the special services that Acme Style discusses long gone, with some of the basics winding down too... The store was reset ...

Original Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 81 Main Street, South River, NJ Opened:  1952 Closed:  1966 Later Tenants:  Krauser's Food Stores Photographed:  February 2021 Diagonally across the street from the Tropical Supermarket here in South River is this Krauser's, in part of a 9000 square foot former ACME. Krauser's is a large convenience store / small grocery store with some dry goods, a large selection of liquor and single-serve beverages, and a deli and grill. It's likely that the sign structure and the partial overhang seen here are left over from the building's days as an ACME. Now this is not a convenience store blog, but I do want to take a minute to appreciate the owner of this store who was exceedingly nice to me when I stopped in to grab an iced tea for the day (and by the end of the transaction, he was calling me "my friend"). The columns and chimney are definitely ACME relics. I'm unsure whether the part that extends out this side (and th...

Tropical Supermarket Owner: Ricardo Hernandez Opened:  2005 under current ownership; ca. 2010 as Tropical Supermarket Previous Tenants:  Bravo Supermarkets (until ca. 2010) Cooperative:  Key Food Stores Location: 62 Main St, South River, NJ Photographed:  February 2021 We are now jumping into our next group of stores in the greater New Brunswick area! And oh boy golly gee I should change that graphic because we're not actually going to South Brunswick this time. But we're starting just a bit to the southeast of New Brunswick for downtown South River. There's nothing like a wonderful tiny supermarket in a great small downtown, and this 6400 square foot spot fits the bill. Although the current owners opened up shop in 2005 (and it's likely the store has been a supermarket for many decades), the store was a Bravo until around 2010 when it became a Tropical Supermarket with Retail Grocers Group (Fine Fare). Around 2017 or so, Tropical switched its seven or so stores ov...

Our next group of stores as we circle back north is in the greater New Brunswick area! We'll be starting at the south end of the group, with South River, Milltown, and North Brunswick, then passing through the eastern edge of Somerset, the next town to the west, before ending in downtown New Brunswick, which is geographically in the northeastern corner of the municipality, before we cross the Raritan River again to return to the northern part of Middlesex County in our next group. But for now, we're starting with a small store here on The Market Report tomorrow and a former supermarket across the street on Grocery Archaeology !

Original Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 1060 US-9, Parlin, NJ Opened:  1969 Closed:  1980s Later Tenants:  Petco Photographed:  February 2021 It's our final day of the Old Bridge & Freehold group! And we've got not one, not two, but three stores here on our last day. The first is at the southern end of the Sayre Woods Shopping Center here in Parlin, just to the north of Old Bridge, to visit an 18,000 square foot former ACME that's now a Petco and one smaller storefront that was unoccupied at the time of my visit. It's been extensively disguised through remodels, as has our other former supermarket in this mall. Between those two is the operating grocery store we're looking at today . And once you've read all of those posts, that is all for this group! Tomorrow we embark on something new just to the north...

Original Tenant: Grand Union Address: 1004 US-9, Old Bridge, NJ Opened:  1950s Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  Marshalls Photographed:  February 2021 It seems that the right half (about 17,000 square feet) of this Marshalls was originally a Grand Union. Now it looks like there's nothing really special about this former Grand Union, which shares a mall with today's other stores, the former ACME and current Bhavani Foods in the Sayre Woods Shopping Center. But if we look carefully, we can see that the metal tower sign to the far right is nearly identical to the one we saw in the historical photo of the Union location . That wraps up our Old Bridge & Freehold group, so come back tomorrow to check out the next group!

Original Tenant:  Pathmark Address:  1043 US-9, Old Bridge, NJ Opened:  1990s Closed:  2015 Later Tenants: subdivided Photographed: February 2021 Our second post today is kinda the same as the first post. See a look at the ALDI here , and now we're going to take a closer look at the rest of the building. The 58,000 square foot building is a 1990s-era Pathmark Super Center, which you can see Acme Style's coverage of at the end of their post here . As we'll see, the former Pathmark space is remarkably intact six years after closing... ...although much of the facade has been repainted to disguise its red, white, and blue Pathmark colors. The structure of the facade is still mostly intact though, with just a few cosmetic changes over on the ALDI side. In this post we're going to be focusing on the other half of the store, which is even more original inside... Here's a look at the dividing wall with the new ALDI to the left of the wall on the left side. Customer servic...