Grocery Archaeology

Welcome to the Stroudsburg area! We're going to be around this part of the state for around a month, with maybe half of that dedicated to Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg. But we're starting to the south of Stroudsburg, a town of around 6000 people in the eastern part of the Poconos, with stops in Pen Argyl, Bangor, and Portland, before moving east to Shawnee and then north to East Stroudsburg, at which point we'll circle back into Stroudsburg itself, then head west and south for stops in Bartonsville, Tannersville, and Brodheadsville. (Then after that it's out west to the Coal Region!) It's a lot of interesting stuff in this area, so let's jump in. Monday will be our first stop, out in Pen Argyl here on The Market Report on Monday!

Original Grocery Tenant: ShopRite Address: 242 Lincoln Blvd, Middlesex, NJ Opened:  1968 Closed:  1984 Later Tenants:  Pathmark (1984-2015) > Price Saver Fresh Marketplace (April 2019-September 2019) > SuperFresh (coming soon) Photographed:  January 10, 2023 Just a quick revisit at the Price Saver Fresh Marketplace, previously Pathmark and ShopRite, in Middlesex, NJ. The space's history has been well-documented here on the blog , and we do have definitive confirmation that the space is set to become a SuperFresh. The SuperFresh/Food World 2023 calendar, which they were giving out at the Belleville location, has the locations listed on the back and this store was on it listed as opening 2023. Worth noting, though, that Roselle is not listed on that same list -- and, for one reason or another, the December 2023 calendar page says Wishing All Food Bazaar Customers a Merry Christmas. So I'm not entirely sure what to make of that all. As we can see in these two pi...

Original Grocery Tenant:  Hall's Grocery Address: 39 N 7th St, Easton, PA Opened:  1969 Closed:  ca. 2018 Later Tenants:  none Photographed:  January 8, 2021 You'd barely even know this space was home for many decades to a small grocer, now that the store has closed up shop, except for the Pepsi vending machine out front which is a bit odd to just have in front of someone's house. What I didn't realize when I was there is that the store actually had its entrance here in this building but most of the store seems to have been to the side, next door in the area with yellow siding that we can see in this street view when apparently the store was still in business. Sadly, this is all that's left these days, and I couldn't get a good look inside the store. But that wraps up our look at the Lehigh Valley! Tomorrow we're going to see some updates and special reports, and then after that we're off to the Stroudsburg area!

Original Grocery Tenant: A&P Address: 1520 Northampton St, Easton, PA Opened:  1950s (?) Closed:  1983 Later Tenants:  ShopRite (possible?) > Cramer's Home Center (1980s-1998) > CVS (1998- ) Photographed:  January 8, 2021 This 17,000 square foot store was clearly a centennial A&P, but interestingly enough also has an arched roof behind that facade with a small flat section on either side, suggesting it may actually have been an earlier build converted to a centennial in the 1960s. According to JoshAustin610 , it may have later become a ShopRite before a series of non-grocery tenants, most recently CVS. We have one more stop in the Lehigh Valley before we move on, which is a small former grocery store just north of center city Easton that we'll be seeing tomorrow right here on Grocery Archaeology!

Original Grocery Tenant: ShopRite Address: 1740 Stefko Blvd, Bethlehem, PA Opened:  ca. 1970s Closed:  1989 Later Tenants:  Strauss Auto > subdivided Photographed:  January 13, 2022 Not too much to see here, but this former ShopRite (which if I'm not mistaken was owned by Saker Supermarkets, although I'm not positive of that) is located to the northeast of center city Bethlehem. It's around 36,000 square feet, which is right in line with many of the 1970s ShopRites. I'm not positive whether the tall sign seen here is left over from ShopRite, but it wouldn't surprise me if that were the case. ShopRite might not be in this immediate neighborhood, but the Wakefern cooperative has returned with a store just a few doors down on Stefko Boulevard. Head over to The Independent Edition tomorrow to check it out!

Original Grocery Tenant: Bravo Supermarkets (?) Address: 1245 W 7th St, South Plainfield, NJ Opened:  1983 Closed:  2022 Later Tenants:  Tropical Supermarket (coming soon) Photographed:  March 3, 2023 Welcome back to South Plainfield! You may not remember our first visit here, so feel free to refresh your memory . Back in 2020, I saw an outdated, clearly struggling store and wondered how it was able to survive in that condition, not to mention with a smaller but better-run competitor all but across the street. Turns out it wasn't, and the store closed in 2022. Shortly thereafter, the landlord announced they had signed a lease with seven-store Key Food-affiliated chain Tropical Supermarkets. I visited in early March to find the store stripped of all of its Bravo branding, but no signage on the building itself. There was a sign at the end of the parking lot... ...but the massive sign for the strip mall had a giant blank panel at the top where the Bravo logo used to ...

Original Grocery Tenant: George's IGA Address: 2305 Schoenersville Rd, Bethlehem, PA Opened:  1973 Closed:  early 1990s Later Tenants:  King's (early 1990s-1994) > Weis Markets (1994-2021) Photographed:  January 13, 2022 I visited the Westgate Weis right after it opened in late 2021, and mentioned that it replaced a much older and smaller store in the same mall. This roughly 35,000 square foot store was originally an IGA, then the King's Market of Westgate, later being acquired by Weis and converting in 1994. I visited the store one time, probably back in around 2015 or 2016. It had the Fresh Market decor inside and wasn't that bad, but the Westgate Mall was really sad. Although the new Weis seems to be driving a bit of new traffic to the mall, there's still a lot of vacancies in the mall. Here we can see the rest of the mall, looking down to the new Weis at the far end. Here's one of the entrances to the indoor hallway portion of the mall, which seems to...

Original Grocery Tenant: Bottom Dollar Food Address: 1529 Broadway, Fountain Hill, PA Opened:  2011 Closed:  2015 Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  January 8, 2021 Moving on from the Allentown area to the Bethlehem area, we find this former Bottom Dollar Food location in Fountain Hill, a small town just to the south of South Bethlehem. The store was open for four years before closing with the rest of the Bottom Dollar chain in 2015. The roughly 18,000 square foot store is today divided between Dollar General and another space that was vacant at the time of my visit. On Monday we're headed into the south side of Bethlehem to check out a small supermarket that recently closed, over on The Independent Edition !

Original Grocery Tenant: Bottom Dollar Food, Penn Fruit previously on property Address: 1165 MacArthur Rd, Whitehall, PA Opened:  2012 Closed:  2015 Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  January 8, 2021 (If you've already seen this... looks like I accidentally scheduled it for 2/7 instead of 3/7. Whoops.) Here's an interesting little store in the Lehigh Valley suburb of Whitehall, to the north of Allentown. The store was built as a 20,000 square foot Bottom Dollar Food discount supermarket in 2012, but it was actually built on the site of a former Penn Fruit which until its 2012 demolition was remarkably intact. The store, as you can see in the picture above, still has its tall Penn Fruit sign, just with some new tenants advertised on it. Plus, the trademark slope over the main entrance is present still on the AutoZone. Here's a look at the old store prior to its demolition. Note that the Rent-a-Center portion of the building is still standing. And now for som...

Original Grocery Tenant: unknown Address: 501 N 6th St, Allentown, PA Opened:  unknown Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  Kim's Market (closed 2019) Photographed:  January 8, 2021 Here's a grocery store in a mostly residential neighborhood of northern Center City that didn't make it. As we'll see, it's not the store, it's the building that didn't work. This is another one I'm sure has been a grocery store for many decades but was most recently Kim's Market, which closed in 2019. If we look at the notice on the front door, it warns that the structure is unsafe and needs to be razed or repaired. Admittedly walking under the front overhang and looking in the windows freaked me out just a little bit, but no building fell on me, so I'm fine. Classic corner grocer entrance door here. The store seemed to have the opportunity to vacate, leaving behind all the fixtures and a lot of signage, but taking all merchandise out... ...and we see that there had be...