Grocery Archaeology

Original Tenant: Rex-Gene Food Warehouse Address: 136 Monmouth Rd, West Long Branch, NJ Opened:  unknown Closed:  unknown Later Tenants:  unsure of exact location Photographed:  January 2021 Bear with me on this one. I am fairly certain that this 26,000 square foot segment at the far right of the Kmart of West Long Branch was previously a Rex-Gene Food Warehouse -- but I am not entirely convinced that the Rex-Gene wasn't at the far left side of the Kmart, since I recall reading that Kmart expanded into the Rex-Gene space. The Kmart closed in early 2020 and, to my knowledge, remains vacant. Rex-Gene is not a chain about which there is a lot of information on the internet, but I'm going to give a few details here. The chain originated in Brooklyn and later expanded to New Jersey, eventually moving their headquarters to Red Bank. I am unsure how many stores Rex-Gene had at its peak, but by early 1998, they were down to five: Berkeley, West Long Branch, Rahway , Sayrev...

Original Tenant: A&P Address:  1002 NJ-36, Atlantic Highlands, NJ Opened:  1970s Closed:  2015 Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  December 2020 Up until 2015, Atlantic Highlands had two supermarkets -- the Foodtown that we saw yesterday, and this store, which was a 24,000 square foot 1970s-era A&P. Acme Style's post on the Foodtown also has a great look at this A&P when in business, but today it's been subdivided and nicely revitalized with these two new tenants. Clearly the Foodtown has long been the preferred store in town, as Acme Style explains, so no great loss here with the A&P closing. Up next, we're going to take a trip over the Highlands-Sea Bright Bridge out to Sea Bright, where we're taking a look at an independent store on The Independent Edition tomorrow!

It's time for our next (northern) Jersey Shore group! Unfortunately this is as far south as we'll be getting on the east coast of New Jersey, though we'll go a bit farther south when we get out to the western part of the state. We're going to pass along the coast through Port Monmouth, Atlantic Highlands, Sea Bright, Long Branch, West Long Branch, Belmar, and Brick with a relatively small group of just over a week's worth of stores. However, we'll double up on a few days so we see more than one store a day. As we can see in the map above, we're actually heading back up to north of the  Holmdel  area, then continuing all along the shore to Brick, which is about 20 miles south of  Tinton Falls  where we ended the last group. All of our coverage is going to be in Monmouth County, except for Brick Township which is in Ocean County. But for now, we'll be going back to the very northeastern part of Monmouth County tomorrow, for not one but  two  Foodtowns tomo...