Grocery Archaeology

Original Tenant: A&P Address: 907 Oak Tree Rd, South Plainfield, NJ Opened:  late 90s Closed:  2015 Later Tenants:  ACME Markets (2015-2018) > ALDI (2020-present) Photographed:  July 2020 Sadly, not a whole lot to see here at the former A&P-turned-ACME in South Plainfield. A&P moved here in the late 90s from the Futurestore across the street, which became a ShopRite in 2016. Check out pictures of the store as an A&P here and as an ACME here . The ACME did look pretty good especially after the Quality Built renovation, but the reality is (as much as I really do love ACME) none of their stores are half as good as the latest Saker ShopRites. So ALDI moved in to part of the space, opening in December of 2016 . I was hoping to get to the store before any substantial renovation was done so that I could take a look inside, but it had already all been demolished inside. ALDI moved here from a different, older former ACME just up Park Avenue in South Pl...

Original Tenant:  Pathmark Address:  1043 US-9, Old Bridge, NJ Opened:  1990s Closed:  2015 Later Tenants: subdivided Photographed: February 2021 Our second post today is kinda the same as the first post. See a look at the ALDI here , and now we're going to take a closer look at the rest of the building. The 58,000 square foot building is a 1990s-era Pathmark Super Center, which you can see Acme Style's coverage of at the end of their post here . As we'll see, the former Pathmark space is remarkably intact six years after closing... ...although much of the facade has been repainted to disguise its red, white, and blue Pathmark colors. The structure of the facade is still mostly intact though, with just a few cosmetic changes over on the ALDI side. In this post we're going to be focusing on the other half of the store, which is even more original inside... Here's a look at the dividing wall with the new ALDI to the left of the wall on the left side. Customer servic...

Original Tenant: unknown Address: 3057 NJ-35, Hazlet, NJ Opened:  unknown Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  99 Cent Dreams (??-ca. 2010) > ALDI (ca. 2010-2019) Photographed:  January 2021 In 2019, the 20,000 square foot ALDI in Hazlet moved across the street into 24,000 square feet of a former Pathmark . Since there is room to expand in this space, I assume the move was more about location in the newly renovated Hazlet Town Center and moving out of the Hazlet Plaza whose anchor, Toys R Us, had just closed. (It's since become a Harbor Freight Tools and a Goodwill.) After ALDI and Toys R Us moved out, the strip mall was remodeled. The inside of the former ALDI was also cleared out, though some parts remain. Here we can see the former entrance/exit. ALDI decals remain on the entrance doors. We can see the ALDI in progress of being cleared out. It's possible some of the fixtures from this store, which was not that old, were brought over to the new store. Carts seem t...