Grocery Archaeology

Original Tenant: Mayfair Foodtown Address: 5100 N Crescent Blvd, Pennsauken, NJ Opened:  unknown Closed:  1991 Later Tenants:  unidentified Thriftway (1991-mid 90s) > Brown's Thriftway (mid 90s-1999) > Supremo Food Market (1999-ca. 2010) > Trujillo Thriftway (ca. 2010-ca. 2015) Photographed:  January 2021 This store, located at the corner of Browning Road and Crescent Boulevard (route 130) in Pennsauken, has quite the history which I'm going to attempt to piece together here. The earliest tenant I could find for the property was Mayfair Foodtown, which may or may not have been the original tenant (Mayfair, and Foodtown in general, tended to move into closed stores rather than build their own, but it's hard to say here). Mayfair closed in 1991 here, selling the store to a Thriftway owner who I haven't been able to identify. By the mid-1990s, that owner went bankrupt and the store was sold to a former ShopRite owner, later Melmarkets Foodtown executive, Stev...

Original Tenant: Mayfair Foodtown (?) Address: 430 Springfield Ave, Berkeley Heights, NJ Opened:  unknown Closed:  1990s Later Tenants:  Kings Food Markets (1990s-2013) > New York Marts (planned, never opened) Photographed:  November 2020 Tucked away behind the Stop & Shop and former A&P in Berkeley Heights is a second strip mall, once home to a Mayfair Foodtown and later Kings Food Market at the far back. I don't know much history here, but Kings closed up shop in 2013, moving down the street about two and a half miles to a former Pathmark in Gillette . As far as the origins of the building, I know nothing beyond looking at Historic Aerials to find that the building was constructed between 1963 and 1970, then expanded at least once. The main thing that intrigues me is the building's large size -- at 39,000 square feet, it would be easily one of the largest Kings stores out there and much larger than what most supermarkets were building in the 1960s. I...

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...

Original Tenant:  Food Fair Address:  190 Elmora Ave, Elmora, Elizabeth, NJ Opened:  1960s Closed:  1970s Later Tenants:  Pantry Pride > Mayfair Foodtown > Cost Cutters > Elmora Farmers Market/Dollar General Photographed:  ca. 2005, 2008 Repeating that first picture from our 2017 store tour of the Elmora Farmers Market , which takes up a little more than half of this former supermarket. This time, we have a little more material. Namely, a glimpse of the Food Fair arch still intact as late as 2005... Okay, yes, this is a picture of the Dunkin' Donuts outparcel. But you can see the yellow arch in the background of the image! (The Dunkin' Donuts was for a very long time a favorite hangout of my family's older members, along with the White Castle on the other side of the train tracks.) But for a better picture... Here's a look at the store under construction back in 2008. This is very interesting to me... apparently the fac...

Original Tenant:  Mayfair Foodtown Address: 52-56 Westfield Ave, Clark, NJ Opened:  unknown Closed:  1989 Later Tenants:  A&P (1989-2006) Photographed:  December 2020 Quite the relic here in downtown Clark. This 24,000 square foot building was built as a Mayfair Foodtown, later being sold to A&P in 1989. A&P, in turn, moved a little over a mile northwest to the location that's now ACME in 2006. Since then, the space has remained vacant, with A&P even holding on to the lease until 2012. The township, then, condemned the space in 2018 with plans to forcibly acquire the store by eminent domain, although I'm not sure where those plans stand now. As much as a retail relic like this excites me, I also understand it's quite the eyesore in a downtown location. The building's exterior has deteriorated extensively over the years, with paint peeling and mold forming around the walls. I believe the panels above the doors here are something to do with vent...