The Market Report

ShopRite of Branchburg Owner: Richard Saker / Saker Supermarkets Opened:  early 2000s Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  Wakefern Food Corp. Location:  3166 US-22, Branchburg, NJ Photographed:  January 2021 We are touring our next Saker ShopRite (the last one we just saw was in Somerville a few days ago), and by the way, this is the first one I photographed with my fancy new phone, so the pictures came out really nicely. This 67,000 square foot store might be a little smaller than some of the other Saker locations, but it's equally nice. At this point, we're pretty familiar with what Saker stores look like... Produce is on the left side of the store, with bakery in the second aisle and Chinese food and sushi at the back of that island. Cheese, deli, prepared foods, and seafood are at the back of these two aisles, with meat lining the rest of the back wall, Nutrition Center in the first two grocery aisles, and frozen/dairy in the last two aisles. Pharmacy is...

Wegmans Food Markets Opened: 1990s Previous Tenants:  none Location:  724 US-202, Bridgewater, NJ Photographed:  January 2020 Ah, to be a forgetful supermarket blogger. I stopped by this 115,000 square foot Wegmans with a friend while passing through the area to get some lunch. Because most Wegmans look more or less the same, I figured I could take it easy a little bit and get away with just an exterior picture and a few from the second floor cafe overlooking the whole sales floor. Satisfied with my good-enough laziness and with the murky belief that we'd toured a Wegmans at least once here on the blog, I marked this store down as a quick Look Inside instead of a full tour. One problem: while sorting out the pictures to be used in this post back in May of 2020 (holy cow, that was a long time ago now), I realized I already had a full tour of this store -- and that I'd posted it back in March 2019 . Oh well. Here's a look across the sales floor from pro...

Original Tenant: Mayfair Foodtown Address: 120 Orlando Dr, Raritan, NJ Opened:  ca. 1987 Closed:  mid-1990s Later Tenants:  Edwards (mid-90s-2001) > Stop & Shop (2001-2017) Photographed:  January 2021 There's nothing like shopping at one of the Saker ShopRite superstores, and it seems Raritan customers agree. Six years after the Somerville location opened on the site of a former Pathmark, Stop & Shop announced they were closing this 51,000 square foot Raritan location just half a mile away from the new ShopRite. The store dates back to the 80s as a Mayfair Foodtown, which later became an Edwards and then a Stop & Shop, and remains vacant so far. Tucked away in the back of the Raritan Mall off of Route 206 (but largely inaccessible from the highway), this Stop & Shop had a rough time for quite a while. As early as 2012, Acme Style reported that the store was suffering from the ShopRite's opening. (They had more coverage in 2018 here .) The Hillsb...

ShopRite of Somerville Owner: Richard Saker / Saker Supermarkets Opened:  2011 Previous Tenants:  none, Pathmark previously on this property Cooperative:  Wakefern Food Corp. Location:  1 S Davenport Ave, Somerville, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 It's become the norm for downtown grocery locations to be in mixed-use developments, frequently in smaller spaces and more urban in style. Well, Saker Supermarkets didn't get the memo, redeveloping a giant property which previously held a Pathmark and a few other buildings with a 70,000+ square foot store with all the bells and whistles of the large suburban stores. And Somerville isn't a big city, but it's a substantial town with a bustling business district along Main Street, which runs along the left side of the store from the above view. In an unusual but welcome twist of the norm, the downtown redevelopment here in Somerville actually perceptibly drew traffic away from the highway strip malls on 206! Check out the ...