[Groceteria]

Rutherford and Lyndhurst Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1926-1957

Belleville and Nutley Chain Grocery/Supemarket Locations, 1926-1972

Livingston, Maplewood, and The Oranges Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1924-1970

Harrison and Kearny Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-1971

And lots more to come...

[Steve Landry]

Rutherford and Lyndhurst Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1926-1957

Belleville and Nutley Chain Grocery/Supemarket Locations, 1926-1972

Livingston, Maplewood, and The Oranges Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1924-1970

Harrison and Kearny Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-1971

And lots more to come...

AWESOME work David!!!

[Groceteria]

Thanks! I try to give you a fresh batch of Food Fairs as often as I can!

[Groceteria]

A little more New Jersey:

East Orange Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1924-1965

Perth Amboy Chain Grocery/Supermarket Locations, 1925-1965

[marketreportblog]

More great work! I responded to a lot of the Oranges and Livingston things on Bluesky (linking for posterity), but here's a few thoughts on East Orange:

• 935 South Orange Ave opened as a CTown in 2007. Either later that year or the following year, it switched to Fine Fare. It stayed in business until 2015, when it burned down and was never rebuilt.

• 390 Main St opened as a Kings in 1952. The best I can do for Kings' closure date is between 1965 and 1984, when I know the space was an Associated supermarket. Associated was open at least until 1986. Tropical Sun opened in 2001.

• 563-565 Central Ave opened as Extra in the 1980s, and it was the original Extra. I believe the ShopRite was owned by Village, and it closed in 1987 when the Brick Church location opened (at 533 Main St).

• Also of note: I'm murky on the history here, but I believe 563 Central became a Good Deal at some point after Safeway, which later moved to the location at 500 Central. Incidentally, I had no idea that store was originally a Safeway!

• 1A Main St in East Orange is not on your list -- it wasn't a supermarket during any of the years you surveyed -- but it was a Western Beef from 1985 to late 2017. It's now a building supply warehouse.

• I don't have any specific information to add, but I love the 7 Hoffman building. 7-17 Hoffman was for a long time a tile/stone distributor and still has the A&P facade very obviously visible.

• 176 Lincoln was a Mayfair, built in the early 1950s (not sure if Mayfair was the original tenant there) and then sold to Kings in 1960. The store closed and was demolished between 1970 and 1979. The property remains vacant.

And some more notes on the Oranges and Livingston:

• 25 S Livingston and 43 S Livingston are the same building. The A&P was in the spot at the north end (19 S Livingston) that was, until recently, Bottle King, and the ACME was in the middle, or the north end of the southern strip -- or what was until recently the Walgreens. Both stores opened in 1954 or shortly before, built on former farmland so there was no older supermarket on the site. ACME closed by the late 1960s and it became a Nicholas Markets Foodtown no later than 1972. Foodtown appears to have closed in the early 90s and the space became a Walgreens by 1995. Also notable, the whole strip is set to be demolished and replaced with a mixed-use retail/residential development, but sans a supermarket as far as I know. Nicholas Markets now operates four Fresh Grocer stores.

• Kings built the 255 S Livingston store in the early 1960s, no later than 1966. The store was originally around 16,000 square feet and constructed with a small strip mall next to it. In 2012, the supermarket was expanded to fill the entire building including the strip mall, bringing it to its present 24,000 square feet. It was the second store to get the Where Inspiration Strikes decor package, and was briefly rumored to close shortly after ACME acquired the chain but did not close, instead completing a light renovation with the addition of a kosher department in what had previously been a liquor store.

• The ShopRite at 483 S Livingston opened in the early 1960s, after Village acquired the Economy ShopRite at 561 S Livingston. The ShopRite at Town Center (Plaza Place), as you note on the spreadsheet, lasted well into the 1970s.

• All the stores listed on Plaza Place were in what's now the Livingston Town Center. The footprint of the front of Town Center is similar to the previous setup, so 2 Plaza Place would be about where QQ Asian is now and the 10 Plaza Place ShopRite would've been roughly where King Fitness is now.

• The Good Deal at 719 Irvington in Maplewood opened in 1958. It appears that it became a ShopRite by the late 1970s, probably owned by Village, and was a ShopRite liquor store by 1979 through at least 1986. Extra appears to have been open by the early 1990s.

• The Kings in Maplewood at 159 Maplewood Ave was one of a half-dozen or so stores Kings had at the time. In early 1959, Kings joined Foodtown, co-branding the stores as Kings Foodtown. Apparently, people were confused and the public reacted poorly to this rebrand, so before the end of 1959 Kings left Foodtown and dropped the name, going back to just Kings. When Kings went bankrupt in 2020, Maplewood and one other store went to the Foodtown cooperative. Those stores, though, were branded Green Way Markets instead of Foodtown. Green Way was a brand acquired from A&P's bankruptcy.

• The ACME at 1865 Springfield in Maplewood closed no later than 1974, when an appliance store occupied the building.

• I'm not sure where the city directory got the 291 Scotland address in Orange, but ShopRite held their grand opening at 321 Scotland Rd on October 7, 1965. The building was a ShopRite through at least 1977, then a Fine Fare by 1992, and then Bravo opened in 1993.

That's a lot but I hope those notes are interesting and helpful :)

[mjhale]

In looking at the location spreadsheets, I notice that the few Safeway locations that are listed don't switch over to being First National Stores locations. Did First National only purchase the New York City Safeway locations? Or was this a matter of not being able to verify a transition to First National in the city directories and other reference materials that are available?

[Groceteria]

I noticed the lack of conversions as well and I don’t really have an explanation for it. They definitely were not reflected in the directories but I don’t know if that means they never happened or not. The newspapers are not as helpful for this in New Jersey as they are in some places. My suspicion is that First National concentrated more on NYC and areas to the north closer to its home territory, but I have absolutely nothing to back that up. More research when I have time…

[mjhale]

The other thing that intrigues me is the Edwards nameplate in relation to First National Stores. The Market Report Blog posted several Stop and Shop stores in the coverage of their closings that have Giant-PA layouts. My understanding from various online discussions is that Ahold used Edwards as a price impact format in New Jersey. The stores were managed by Giant-PA. When Ahold purchased Stop and Shop, these stores were converted to that name and management moved to Stop and Shop. Was Edwards a large supermarket format of First National or were both used for large format stores? The other name that works in to all of this is Super G which Ahold got from purchasing Giant-MD. Super G was the trade name for Giant-MD in NJ, PA and DE. I remember visiting some converted Super G stores in Central Jersey that were using a Giant-PA layout that pre-dated the mirror front format. I was never able to determine if those stores were Edwards or First National before the conversion to Super G. All of the NJ Super G (mostly in the NJ suburbs of Philly) stores were closed or converted to Stop and Shop around 1999/2000. When the conversion to Stop and Shop didn't work, the stores were sold to various Shop Rite operators.

[BillyGr]

The other thing that intrigues me is the Edwards nameplate in relation to First National Stores. The Market Report Blog posted several Stop and Shop stores in the coverage of their closings that have Giant-PA layouts. My understanding from various online discussions is that Ahold used Edwards as a price impact format in New Jersey. The stores were managed by Giant-PA. When Ahold purchased Stop and Shop, these stores were converted to that name and management moved to Stop and Shop. Was Edwards a large supermarket format of First National or were both used for large format stores? The other name that works in to all of this is Super G which Ahold got from purchasing Giant-MD. Super G was the trade name for Giant-MD in NJ, PA and DE. I remember visiting some converted Super G stores in Central Jersey that were using a Giant-PA layout that pre-dated the mirror front format. I was never able to determine if those stores were Edwards or First National before the conversion to Super G. All of the NJ Super G (mostly in the NJ suburbs of Philly) stores were closed or converted to Stop and Shop around 1999/2000. When the conversion to Stop and Shop didn't work, the stores were sold to various Shop Rite operators.

Up here in NY, in this area we only had one each of Finast and Edwards that I remember.

The Finast was definitely an older/smaller store (in fact, today it is a Walgreens via Fays/Eckerd/Rite Aid, and even now is not quite as large as most stores built as drugstores in the last decade or two).
The Edwards was a warehouse format, with things like bag it yourself and no bags provided (you could bring them or buy them, as well as they sold large cardboard boxes).
I vaguely remember going into a couple Edwards down there in NJ (this was most likely after ours was gone), and I don't remember those being specifically different, just that one of them was also an older store (that closed years ago now in East Brunswick on 18 by Edgeboro, that whole plaza is vacant now), while the other was a newer/larger store that remained as Stop & Shop until the closures last year (over in Piscataway off I-287, that one is on the Market Report you refer to and hadn't changed much from when it was Edwards).

[Groceteria]

More later when I've had more time, but some quick poking around suggests to me that the NJ Safeways just didn't perform very well and they sort of dropped off by attrition. A lot of them seem to have closed in the first few years, and the total count was down to 15 stores statewide by 1977 when First National sold off all the NJ stores to Mayfair (and ultimately the Foodtown co-op). First National said at the time that it wanted to concentrate on parts of the BYC metro area that were performing better for them.

[Groceteria]

I also found some indication that a lot of the Safeway stores closed BEFORE the merger. Newark, for example, was down to one location by 1961. The whole NYC division was troubled and losing money, which is why Safeway unloaded it in the first place, so this makes sense.

[Groceteria]

OK, the Safeway - First National question got me curious so I dug in for some in-depth research.

I was able to identify 53 Safeways in NJ at the time of the acquisition, five of which were under construction. Of these, 44 flipped to First National in 1961. At that point, First National also had five pre-existing stores, four of which had been Mutual Markets.

By 1966, about 29 of the Safeways were still open as Finast, and there were also one store that was built as FN/Finast, and three or the former Mutual Markets, for a total of 33.

By 1970, 18 of the Safeways were still open, along with three new builds and three former Mutual Markets.

By 1977, when Finast finally gave up on New Jersey, there were 15 total stores. Of these, eight were from the original Safeway acquisition, three were former Mutual Markets, and four were original Finast locations (or conversions from some other chain).

I had to piece this together from several sources so there may be a few that are a little "off" here and there, but I think this is substantially correct. I'm sure someone will let me know if it isn't. I'll post a lst of these somewhere tomorrow; I don't have it in me to format it tonight.

[marketreportblog]

Hello again and once again wonderful work, and thanks for linking me on the pages! A few comments on my mind.
Westfield Area

• The Pathmark at 6 South Ave W in Cranford moved to 10 South Ave in Garwood in the 1980s. The 10 South Ave store became a Food Emporium (July 2016), which switched to SuperFresh (late 2016), then closed (early 2017). LIDL opened August 2021.

• The Garwood ShopRite opened in 1999, but was planned earlier in the decade. Its layout is almost an exact mirror image of the Elizabeth one, which opened in 1991. Residents' concerns over traffic delayed the store's opening and necessitated the single entrance and exit driveway design the cramped parking lot has.

• The Garwood Kings opened in 1982 when Stop & Shop left New Jersey (for the first time).

• 498 Boulevard in Kenilworth is probably the building now called 488 Boulevard (or Kenilworth Boulevard, depending on who you ask). That tiny store also was an Associated in the 90s, then became an independent called ExpresSupermarket, then the Kenilworth Fresh Market from around 2010 to the summer of 2024, when it became the fifth City Supermarket location, which has justfinished a big renovation.

• The Kenilworth ACME opened November 1, 2015 in a converted A&P, which had itself opened in 1995.

Plainfield Area

• 229 E Front St still has half of its A&P facade up!

• 252 E Front St - the ACME building is now a UHaul place, not Supremo. Supremo is across the street at 249 E Front in a former department store.

• 600 Park Ave is now a Twin City. It might have been a Finast before A&P, and was definitely a Met Foodmarket after A&P but before Twin City.

• I didn't know the Pathmark in Plainfield was originally a Grand Union. Eventually, that building came to be referred to as 1220 South Ave, and was later a Walgreens. It became two independent greengrocers -- Times Farmers Market and then Green Farmers Market, then very briefly in 2016 it became a Key Food, and then an independent called Fig Tree for about two years. It's since been demolished.

• 1405 South Ave was also a CTown from 2010 to 2017 or so.

• 351 Somerset in North Plainfield - Pathmark stores weren't independently owned like ShopRite stores, so it couldn't have been Castroll's Pathmark. As far as I know, all Pathmark stores were owned and operated by Supermarkets General, which itself was a ShopRite member that split off. Was it listed as Castroll's Pathmark somewhere or is that speculation?

• The Foodtown at 1176 US-22 in North Plainfield opened August 28, 1974, per a newspaper ad. It was "adjacent to Great Eastern", which later became Kmart. So that address is probably correct. Meanwhile, ShopRite opened at 1188 US-22 E (same strip mall) in late 1981, but that appears to have replaced an older store somewhere else. So is it possible it was ShopRite > Pathmark > Foodtown > ShopRite > Pathmark? That seems ridiculous. I really have no idea.

Rahway

• 2325 Elizabeth Ave history: it opened in 1963 as an A&P. In 1967 it was still an A&P but by 1971, it had become an A Mart Discount Foods owned by A&P. By 1982, it had returned to A&P. There was also an A&P liquor store on the property. Became a Rex-Gene (discount chain) in the early 90s, then Western Beef in the late 90s, then Universal by 2000.

Lyndhurst Area

• 325 Paterson Ave in Carlstadt should be 625 (or 675) Paterson Ave, That store was a very late-build Grand Union and became a Stop & Shop almost immediately. In October 2024, it became a Food Bazaar.

• The Lyndhurst Stop & Shop opened late 90s as an Edwards.

• I'm not totally sure what your naming scheme for ShopRite locations is but Wallington and Lyndhurst are both Inserra stores, so should they be ShopRite (Inserra) instead of ShopRite (town name)?

Belleville and Kearny areas

• 115 Belmont opened as a Pathmark in the 1970s and closed November 2015. SuperFresh Food World opened July 2016.

• 414 Main opened as a Grand Union by 1979, later Vitale Foodtown(ca. 90s-1998), then A&P (1998-2002), then Food Basics (2002-2015), then Fine Fare (2016-2017), then Bell Farms (2017-2019), now LIDL (2021- ).

• 169 Washington was also briefly an Associated after Pathmark closed.

• Nutley Park Markets owns the ShopRites in Nutley, Kearny, and Belleville today.

• 1 Schuyler Ave in North Arlington appears to have been a Mayfair Foodtown after Food Fair, then an Edwards in the 90s. I don't believe it transitioned to Stop & Shop around 2000-01 when the rest did, but instead went to Jack's Super IGA, later Jack's Foodtown.

[Groceteria]

Hello again and once again wonderful work, and thanks for linking me on the pages!

As ever, thanks again! It’s been a busy week so I’ll dig into these more deeply tomorrow or over the weekend.

A couple of quick things on co-branded stores. With most, my naming convention is to go with how they’re listed in the directories, As far as that co-branded Pathmark, I thought it was odd too because I know the Pathmark “origin story”. I’ll dive back into that, but I know that the confusion came from some ads I found while trying to narrow down some thing about it. More on that this weekend too.

[marketreportblog]

Hello again and once again wonderful work, and thanks for linking me on the pages!

As ever, thanks again! It’s been a busy week so I’ll dig into these more deeply tomorrow or over the weekend.

A couple of quick things on co-branded stores. With most, my naming convention is to go with how they’re listed in the directories, As far as that co-branded Pathmark, I thought it was odd too because I know the Pathmark “origin story”. I’ll dive back into that, but I know that the confusion came from some ads I found while trying to narrow down some thing about it. More on that this weekend too.

Cool, glad it was helpful! I'm looking forward to hearing more about what you've found.