5100 N Crescent Blvd, Pennsauken, NJ

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, Steve Brown, who maintained the store as a Thriftway, restored its profitability in a few years, and sold it in 1999 to Plainfield, NJ-based Supremo. Incidentally, Steve Brown is the father of ShopRite owner and Philadelphia mayoral candidate Jeff Brown, whose stores have rose to prominence in the low-income neighborhoods of the city, several of which we'll be seeing when we visit Philadelphia. Now, it's unclear to me exactly what the store was called when Supremo bought it in 1999 -- it may have been called Supremo from the start, or they may have called it Supreme, kept it a Thriftway, or even switched it to Shop n Bag as we saw in Trenton.

In any event, it was most certainly a Supremo by 2008. But by 2012, an exterior renovation was completed on the whole strip mall, and the store was switched (under the same owners) back to Thriftway. The Thriftway closed around the time that the Thriftway/Shop n Bag cooperative dissolved, about 2015, and has since been subdivided with DaVita Dialysis taking part of the building.

Thriftway signage is still there, although barely visible, on Browning Road. There was no signage on Crescent Blvd because the store was right next to the street.

The foyer area remains from the supermarket's time here, although as we see it's been divided up.

Sure does look like a supermarket foyer! Clearly, there's been a little work done inside, but we do see a bit of supermarket remnants inside...

The space was a good midsized supermarket, of about 23,000 square feet. I don't know what the interior layout would've been nor do I know the decor that would've been here, but I assume it's the late 90s/early 00s decor that's been refreshed in some stores like Trenton. On a slight tangent, why do you suppose it is that Supremo has closed stores here in Pennsauken (they still have a much larger one about two miles away), Philadelphia, and Trenton (where they do still have two in each city)? They seem to do so well up in Northern New Jersey. I suppose the only place up north that they have two stores in the same city is Elizabeth, though, and they both have good locations that support two stores. I've found the in-store experience at the various Supremo-owned stores to be quite good, and I like the pricing and selection. Did they struggle to change the concept for the non-Supremo stores (the Thriftway/Shop n Bag locations), or did they change the banners because the stores were already struggling for a refresh?

Now that's a supermarket entrance/exit foyer for you! Tomorrow we have a big day, three posts at a single strip mall about half a mile southwest of here. But some really cool stuff, so make sure to check it out with one post each here on Grocery Archaeology, The Market Report, and The Independent Edition!