Grocery Archaeology

Original Tenant: Honey Dew Markets Address: 184 Rivervale Rd, River Vale, NJ Opened:  1950s Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  December 2020 You'd hardly know it, but we're looking at a former 10,000 square foot barrel-roof supermarket here in downtown River Vale, which also had an A&P . This building has now been expanded by about 5,000 square feet and the only hint that it was ever a supermarket is the brick tower, which we can see to the left above. The store was occupied by Honey Dew Markets, a local chain of about five stores . I have a vague recollection that the chain then sold to Inserra Supermarkets, a ShopRite operator, and that would make sense if this became a ShopRite that later moved just to the south to Emerson, where the Inserras currently operate a ShopRite in a former Valley Fair department store. But the best part? We have a picture of this store as a Honey Dew! Check it out here . That's from a feature that The Star-...

Original Tenant: Finast Address: 216 Old Tappan Rd, Old Tappan, NJ Opened:  1980s Closed:  1998 Later Tenants:  Vitale Foodtown (??-1998) > A&P (1998-2015) > Estevez Foodtown (2015-2019) Photographed:  December 2020 Today's store is one I was very excited to get to. It's about three miles to the southeast of yesterday's former A&P , although you couldn't actually drive like that because there's a lake between the stores. This was a Vitale Foodtown until 1998, when it became an A&P. When A&P went under, it was taken over by Estevez Foodtown, which in turn closed in 2019 , leaving a 34,000 square foot vacancy in this strangely laid out mall. The store's interior has barely been touched since then. The store's interior was remodeled by Estevez, although the bones of the A&P decor remained just like Hastings-On-Hudson . Let's take a closer look for the labelscar... Okay, so we can definitely make out the A&P Fresh labelscar an...

Original Tenant: A&P Address: 265 Pascack Rd, Washington, NJ Opened:  ca. 1960s Closed:  1980 Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  December 2020 This centennial A&P opened at the south end of a strip mall in Washington, NJ (the one in Bergen County... there are multiple Washingtons in New Jersey). The 18,000 square foot store was later expanded to almost 30,000 square feet, and its competition included an ACME at the north end of the same strip mall. That approximately 19,000 square foot store probably opened at the same time as the A&P here, later being replaced by a ShopRite, then a Vitale Foodtown which A&P took over in 1998 returning them to Pascack Rd in Washington, just at the other end of this mall. A&P sold to Nicholas Markets in 2015, converting the store back to Foodtown for five years before Nicholas left the Allegiance cooperative for Wakefern, but instead of returning the store to ShopRite, the upscale smaller-format store was ...

Original Tenant:  A&P Address:  1491 NJ-23, Wayne, NJ Opened:  1960s Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  unknown Photographed:  August 2019 We saw the former A&P and its replacement up in the Preakness section of Wayne, today's snapshot is one of the other former A&Ps in Wayne, in the Packanack section. There are at least four -- these three, plus a former Futurestore between the the Preakness and Packanack locations which was likely a replacement for the two older stores. The 17,000 square foot store here was expanded, likely by a later tenant, to 23,500 square feet. I photographed it from the parking lot of the Packanack Wayne Shopping Center directly across the street, which is anchored by a Foodtown residing in a former barrel-roof Food Fair. That wraps up Wayne! Now unfortunately there's no geographically elegant way to do this, so we're just gonna hop across most of Passaic County out to Midland Park in Bergen County, t...

Original Tenant:  A&P Address:  54 Preakness Shopping Ctr, Wayne, NJ Opened:  1950s Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  unknown Photographed:  August 2019 Today's snapshot is a 9000 square foot barrel-roof A&P that was expanded to 18,000 square feet and converted to a Centennial model, probably opening in the 1950s and being renovated in the 60s. Half of it has become a CVS, with the other half being a liquor store for many years but now subdivided further. A 25,000 square foot replacement store was constructed in probably the 1970s just across the street. Tomorrow, we have another supermarket on Hamburg Turnpike, which we'll tour over on The Market Report !

 Time for some new features! First of all, I mentioned this in passing previously but I'm back on Flickr again with a new Pro account so I've loaded every single picture from every single post from the first one back in 2016 to today on the photostream for your viewing pleasure. Check it out  here ! Also, to make navigating the blog easier, I put together a  map directory  of all the posts as well. The blue camera is snapshot, the yellow door is look inside, and the red shopping cart is a tour. Each map marker has a link to the latest coverage of that store's location! These will both be updated approximately once a week, so if you don't see the latest posts right away, just wait a few days! Hopefully this makes it easier to see the stores I've covered. Please let me know if you have any feedback or thoughts on these latest changes!