Grocery Archaeology

Original Grocery Tenant: Kings Food Markets Address: 64 Mountain Blvd, Warren, NJ Opened: unknown Closed:  January 2021 Later Tenants: vacant Photographed: June 2, 2023 Very quick return today to the former Kings in Warren, NJ, which I extensively covered a while back here . There's no visible change inside, but a new tenant has signed a lease for the space, and it's confirmed to be a grocery store , although it's not been announced yet just who that is. While I certainly don't have any inside information, I can offer a few observations and guesses. I couldn't photograph it, but I could see it: just inside the entrance is a table with blueprints on it. Sadly I couldn't read what was on them, but that to me makes it likely the new tenant will be an independent or small-chain supermarket, like a Green Way (which has taken over Kings stores in Ridgewood and Maplewood ) or some Key Food affiliate. Any larger operator -- like Trader Joe's or LIDL, for insta...

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: 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 Back in 2020, I saw an outdated, clearly struggling store and wondered how it was able to survive in that condition, not to mention with a smaller but better-run competitor all but across the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 Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 125 Bound Brook Rd, Middlesex, NJ Opened:  1955 Closed:  February 2022 Later Tenants:  vacant Photographed:  March 2022 Our second former ACME of the day (see Morris Plains here ) is the most recently-closed ACME, and also one of the longest-running ones, having opened in 1955. It then closed in February 2022. We toured the store ourselves a while back, and now we're back to see how it's looking post-closure. Not much going on here at Middlesex, although we will see the store has been cleared out. I'm interested in whether this store will be seeing any new grocery tenants coming in. Middlesex is certainly an opportunity for another grocer, with little competition around. Our closest competitor is the Tropical Supermarket half a mile northeast in Dunellen with SuperFood Fresh a mile and a half southwest here in Middlesex. Tropical is a pleasant but small store, and SuperFood is excellent if a bit expensive. Middlesex is also...

Original Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 1 Sunnybrae Blvd, Yardville, Hamilton, NJ Opened:  ca. 1970 Closed:  2001 Later Tenants:  CVS Photographed:  January 2021 The pitched-roof ACME in the Sunnybrae development in the Yardville section of Hamilton Township was one of the latest pitched-roof stores, opening around 1970. The 19,000 square foot store lasted until 2001, when it was replaced by the existing Yardville ACME just a quarter of a mile southeast. Acme Style has more details on the store and its replacement here . Tomorrow, we move on to Bordentown for a look at the ShopRite over on The Market Report !

Original Tenant: Big C Department Store Address: 2465 S Broad St, Hamilton, NJ Opened:  unknown Closed:  1980s Later Tenants:  Davidson Foodtown (1989-1999) > SuperFresh (1999-2010) > subdivided Photographed:  January 2021 A&P had a 1960s-era store just to the northwest at 2130 S Broad , which closed in the 1970s. This 62,000 square foot store opened in the 1970s as a Big C department store before becoming a Davidson Foodtown in 1989 , which then sold to SuperFresh in 1999. It's unclear if the Davidsons who owned this Foodtown were the same Davidsons who owned the New Brunswick locations on George St (later CTown and now Bravo) and Elizabeth St (later Estevez Foodtown and now Food Universe). The space has been subdivided, with Ollie's Bargain Outlet (good stuff cheap!) taking the right half and a gym taking the left half. There's still a supermarket at Independence Plaza, though, as a Save-A-Lot has opened up in the front part of the mall closest to Broa...

Original Tenant: A&P Address: 2130 S Broad St, Hamilton, NJ Opened:  1960s Closed:  1970s Later Tenants:  Jewel T Supermarket > Strauss Auto > Dollar General Photographed:  January 2021 Our first store south of Trenton is very close -- just about a mile and a half southeast -- of our southernmost Trenton stop at the Supreme Food Market . We're on South Broad Street to the southeast of downtown Trenton in Hamilton, what might be considered a downtown of the sprawling township with multiple smaller business districts such as Hamilton Square and Mercerville . This 11,000 square foot store was built as a 1960s simple centennial A&P, and it's just up the street from a former SuperFresh . So this was converted to SuperFresh in 1983 and then moved later, right? Nope. This store actually closed by the late 1970s while the later SuperFresh was originally a department store, then became Foodtown from 1989-1999 when it switched to SuperFresh. Also in that mall...

We are almost done with the Trenton area but before we can move on entirely we're going to spend a few days looking at some stores south of the city. We're going to start in Hamilton for a few stops in the Broad Street Park and Yardville sections before moving through Bordentown and then Florence. It's only ten stores in six days, so not a whole lot to see in this area (I live in northern New Jersey, so the farther we get from home, the less dense my coverage is simply because it's harder for me to get to). But there's some good stuff in these last few Trenton-area posts. So come back tomorrow while we do all of the South Broad Street stores at once, with two posts here on Grocery Archaeology and one on The Market Report ! P.S.  Here's  some updates at Kings you might want to check out.

Original Tenant: Pantry Pride Address: 2497 Brunswick Pk, Lawrenceville, NJ Opened:  1960s Closed:  1979 Later Tenants:  ACME Markets (1979-2018) > LIDL (2021- ) Photographed:  January 2021 Another store I visited with bad timing! I was here at the Lawrenceville ACME about two years after it closed, and just a few months before LIDL opened. I managed to capture the store with its facade torn off, showing what I assumed to be not much of anything -- just some structural brick. Well it turns out that this space was originally built as a Pantry Pride which ACME acquired in 1979, and the brick we're seeing was Pantry Pride's original facade. Here's a look at what Pantry Pride would've looked like. I won't go into too much detail on ACME's history here since Acme Style has already done multiple posts on this location, but I'll just add that LIDL takes up roughly 28,000 square feet of space which appears to be exactly the footprint of the ACME. LIDL is open ...

Original Tenant: Risoldi's Thriftway Address: 3100 Quakerbridge Rd, Hamilton, NJ Opened:  1970s Closed:  2019 Later Tenants:  none Photographed:  January 2021 The roughly 40,000 square foot Risoldi's Market (a Great Valu store, previously Risoldi's Thriftway and before that, in a different location in town, the Liberty Thriftway) opened in the 1970s and closed in 2019 . So I was just about a year and a half too late to photograph it in business, but we do get to see inside. My interior pictures were a little limited because work was going on at the time and I was getting some strange looks from the construction workers. While I haven't heard anything about what might be going into the majority of the supermarket space, a ShopRite liquor store is taking about 10-20,000 square feet of the store. It was a good-looking exterior, but I've never seen an interior picture of the supermarket in business, and it's really hard to tell what the interior would've look...

Original Tenant: ACME Markets Address: 318 NJ-33, Mercerville, Hamilton, NJ Opened:  early 1960s Closed:  1993 Later Tenants:  Smith's Ace Hardware / Party Fair Photographed:  January 2021 The ACME of Mercerville, at NJ-33 and Quakerbridge Rd, opened in the late 1950s or early 1960s and closed in 1993 when the replacement store opened just east on NJ-33. I was not aware, by the way, when I visited, that the ACME was actually both  the Ace Hardware space and the neighboring Party Fair for a combined total of 25,000 square feet. It used to be more obvious before the facade renovation. It also looks like that facade renovation included an expansion of the Ace Hardware out to the left side, making me think that whole space was previously the ACME. I didn't go into the hardware store nor the Party Fair, but I doubt there are any ACME remnants inside either. At the east end of the strip mall was an A&P, later SuperFresh , which was constructed separately and t...