The Market Report

Get ready for... And we're hardly done with ShopRite week! We'll be taking a look at supermarkets offering a variety of food from around the world, including: Monday - a Chinese supermarket Tuesday - an Italian specialty market Wednesday - a small Indian supermarket Thursday - a Latin and Spanish supermarket and butcher Friday - a Polish packaged-foods store That's not a bad survey of the cuisine of the world -- or I should say, of the stores that sell the cuisines of the world!

One more installment in ShopRite week! This time we're heading up to the relatively small town of Oakland, NJ. There's a huge ShopRite, owned by the Clare family, up on a hill overlooking US-202. But the strange part? The storefront does not, anywhere, have the ShopRite name or logo. (The name is on the back of the store, which faces US-202.) The facade where the Long Hill Plaza sign is is actually an overhang over the driveway where people who have ordered from ShopRite from Home can pull up to pick up their order. Inside the plaza is a ShopRite and two or three smaller businesses. But it's mostly ShopRite! A panoramic view of the ShopRite and its isolated (and very peaceful) parking lot. Towards the back of the store, in the toy and nonfood aisle, we come across a surprise... What other ShopRite has windows overlooking such beautiful scenery? US-202 is the road visible in the foreground, with the driveway into ShopRite visible to the right. This is the bea...

One more store tour in ShopRite week! Today we're heading out to Watchung, a relatively small town located half an hour pretty much due west of Newark, for those who aren't familiar. This ShopRite is owned by Springfield, NJ-based Village Super Market, whose stores we've seen in  Garwood , Millburn ,  West Orange , and most recently, Livingston . This store is in sore need of remodeling, given that its latest full renovation was probably in the late 1970s, although it has been kept up better than similarly old stores in Elizabeth , East Orange, and Millburn . This ShopRite is part of the Blue Star Mall, a large shopping complex, and one of two major malls in Watchung. The other, Watchung Square Mall, includes a Stop & Shop as well as a Target and  a Walmart. These storefronts, located just to the right of the ShopRite, are vacant but are "reserved" according to the online listing  (click "Leasing Plan"). Rumor has it they're leased by V...

Today we're going to take a look at a former Pathmark in Belleville, NJ that closed before the final bankruptcy, in 2012. The Infusino & LoCurcio families, who co-own the ShopRite of Nutley, gutted the space and replaced it will a brand-new, state-of-the art ShopRite. However, they were working with a very strange space. Here's a very quick representation of the store's layout, not at all to scale, but everything's in the right place. On the outside and layout-wise, the store is very much still a Pathmark. (It also still has an operational basement parking garage!) However, the renovations that have been done are very nice. This part of the storefront is actually over the exit, not the entrance. You walk behind the rows of plants to reach the entrance to the right. When you enter the store, you're greeted with a spacious produce section. The bakery department is in the front right corner. As visible here, prepared foods continue along the righ...