The Market Report

The ShopRite of Carteret opened in the 1970s in a former Food Fair, moving from a nearby streetfront location. It's the only store owned and operated by the Sitar family -- and has a very friendly, neighborhood store feeling. These pictures come from September 2016, prior to the most recent renovation which made changes both inside and outside the store. Most notably, the entire facade is no longer blue. You can see a newer picture here and a shot of the interior here . The store is located at 801 Roosevelt Ave, Carteret, NJ. Photographed September 2016

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Yesterday's post was from Maplewood, NJ, and the other supermarket in Maplewood is a location of the  Extra Supermarket  chain. Like the Maplewood location, the East Orange location was previously a ShopRite, but the East Orange store was the first one, opening in the late 1980s -- as the ShopRite it replaced, owned by Village Super Market, was consolidated with a few other East Orange stores into the existing Brick Church location in 1987. The store's front end faces the side wall I believe, although I've never been inside. I'd like to go back and tour the interior sometime! The store is located at 563 Central Ave, East Orange, NJ. Photographed November 2018

Right smack in the middle of the quaint downtown of Maplewood, NJ is a tiny, 8,000 square foot Kings Food Market. It's a beautifully maintained store, though, and packs a lot into a very small space. Kings fascinates me because of the many very old stores they have and the fact that many of their stores were taken over from big chains (Finast, Stop & Shop, and Food Fair, among others). I wish there were a little more history visible in their locations, though. Oh, and I wish they'd lower all their prices by about 40%. This store is at 159 Maplewood Ave. Photographed August 2018

Continuing yesterday's theme of Grand Union by taking a look at a former Grand Union here in Oakland, NJ. The store has been subdivided between Staples (shown here) and the Oakland Giant Farmers Market , a very large farmers market/gourmet grocery store type thing that I would love to visit sometime but haven't gotten around to yet. The Grand Union competed with a nearby A&P and a ShopRite . It's located at 350 Ramapo Valley Rd, Oakland, NJ. Photographed July 2018

While stopping in a small grocery store/deli for lunch near Wurtsboro, NY (I've tried and failed several times to locate the exact location), I was caught by this bakery case. I suspected, and later confirmed, that it was from a Grand Union. Again, if I could get the exact location of this stop I made, I might even be able to tell which GU it came from. Another reason I want to locate this place is that the food and service were fantastic! We ordered (freshly-cooked) mozzarella sticks and for whatever reason the cheese leaked out of a few, which the worker apologized for before bringing us a second, new order of better mozzarella sticks for free. (There wasn't even all that much wrong with the first order!) I wish I could recommend this place but have been unable to find it. Photographed May 2017

When new tenants took over Pathmark stores, some gutted the stores and remodeled them . Some made the existing decor their own with some strategic decals. Others did even less. Fresh Emporium, owned by Bronx-based investor Neftali Medina, covered some  of the Pathmark logos at their store here in Landing (we toured their other location in Jefferson a while ago). Once Key Food threatened to sue them over their use of the Fresh Emporium name, arguing it's too close to their banner The Food Emporium, Fresh Emporium made a quick switch to Fresh Imperium. While I wish I had interior pictures from when the store was in business, I was stopped by a manager early in my tour who very nastily informed me photography was not allowed in the store, having me delete the pictures I took and leave my phone at the front office while I was in the store. It was very early in my photography, and I had no idea she didn't have the power to tell me any of that. (If that happened now, I'...

Didn't even realize that my planning lined up another former Acme for today, along with our snapshots from yesterday and the day before . I'm not going to provide an extensive history here, mostly because Acme Style already has done so much better than I ever could. Anyhow, I have to agree with Acme Style's conclusion that the new facade is very nice and that it is a lot like the newer facade updates Acme is doing now. The store is located at 11 Center St. Photographed May 2016

Continuing our theme from yesterday of former Acme Markets locations, we are looking at another location in the Lake Hiawatha neighborhood of Parsippany. It's located directly across the street from the Foodtown (former Grand Union) which you can see coverage of here and here . This 11,000 square foot store is significantly smaller than the 30,000 square foot Grand Union-turned-Foodtown across the street. Photographed May 2019

This store opened as an Acme Market on August 10, 1957 and closed on August 6, 1966, as Acme Style reports . Today, it's a CVS (surprise!) and at 565 Valley Rd, it's just up the street from a currently operating Acme in a former A&P, which will be coming to the blog soon. This store was only 11,000 square feet. However, the current Acme is only 30,000 square feet or so, and the other competition -- a Kings farther north on Valley -- is smaller at 17,000 square feet. Like so many stores of this era, the storefront actually faces the street with the parking lot on the side. Photographed May 2019

Some former supermarkets have been so badly butchered or, depending on how you look at it, so well reinvented, that you can't tell that it was ever a grocery store. Some look like they just closed yesterday. Others fall in the middle -- they still have the bones of the supermarket, but have been extensively altered. Today's Snapshot falls in that last category. Yes, this building is now a Walgreens, and it was previously a Drug Fair. But you don't have to imagine too much to see it as a former A&P centennial-style store. Obviously the existing facade has been extensively covered, but the shape is still there. And the entrance still faces the parking lot on the side, just like it would have in the A&P days. I wasn't able to get extensive coverage, but there are still loading docks in the back also. The store has a basement, which is a no-brainer because it's on a hill meaning that the lower level is ground level in the back. I'd driven by this store ...

We're here once again at the Fair Ridge Mall in Fairview, NJ to return to the store that we saw: As a Key Food Marketplace in May 2017 , As a SuperFresh in June 2018 , and most recently, As a Freshway in December 2018 . Note that all of those stores were owned by the same person, Kevin Kim, a supermarket owner out of Queens. Kim has at this point sold or closed all of his stores except this one. We've seen his store in Plainsboro  and Belleville , and a few of his other stores will be coming soon to the blog. As I mentioned, this is his last store and it's pretty obvious that this one is closing as well. Many of the shelves are empty around the store, but where it was most obvious is the meat department -- so often a centerpiece department that makes up for most of the store's perishable sales. Well, you'll notice this store's service butcher is closed and covered over with paper from the circular the store no longer uses. Oh, and although the...

The Market Report was first on the scene photographing the brand-new SuperFresh of Linden, NJ on opening week. The Market Report then promptly forgot about the photos and let them sit in his Google Photos account for three months. But anyway, here we go! Unfortunately, these are the only "before" photos that I have of the store; this is when it had closed as a Pathmark. I took them in September 2016 after the store closed in September 2015. It was closed in the first round of closures of the A&P bankruptcy; A&P did not even attempt to find this store a buyer. It wasn't until May 2018 that the township officially announced Key Food member Harold Lee under his chain Food World Supermarkets was preparing to move into the location. After a year's worth of extensive renovation -- by which I mean stripping the building back to nothing (keep in mind this store was only built in 1992!) and starting from scratch -- the Food World-owned SuperFresh of Linden opene...