The Market Report

The Food Emporium Garwood is no more! Superfresh coming soon! http://thefoodemporiumgarwood.com/ Post on Facebook This is a good choice. "The Food Emporium" had too much of a bad reputation behind it, and with Superfresh, they can make a "fresh" (ha! - couldn't resist) start. I personally liked this store a lot but I know of many people who don't. Photo from Styertowne on Flickr.

La Tiendona del Pueblo, Part II CTown Supermarket, Bethlehem, PA Bethlehem, PA has an appeal to most people. Some like its historic, "small-town" downtown area (definitely a nice downtown). Some like the city-within-a-city of South Bethlehem . Others go for the Sands Casino . It's pretty safe to say that few visit Bethlehem for its supermarkets. And you certainly wouldn't visit it for its Ahart's . But within walking distance of Ahart's is another CTown, opened ca. 2012 in the former Supermercado Mi Tierra , the original Latin supermarket of the Lehigh Valley. (Click on the name for an interesting article about the store's closing and history.) Once again shattering the traditional perception of CTown as dirty, rundown, and overpriced, this CTown is quite beautiful and generally a good store. To get an idea of the layout, take a look at this interior tour on Google Maps. Have an idea of how the store is laid out? Now let's take a look at my ow...

La Tiendona del Pueblo, Part I CTown Supermarket, Allentown, PA We're continuing our tour of the Lehigh Valley area with this small inner-city CTown supermarket operating in a former Save-A-Lot. I know a lot of people dislike CTown but in my experience CTown has been a consistently good urban supermarket. All of the stores I've been to have been clean and well-stocked, with excellent prices. This one was no exception. The building is a former barrel roof A&P which opened in the 40s (I believe) and was replaced by Jewel-T in 1978, becoming Save-A-Lot in 1986. Save-A-Lot closed in 2001 and was replaced by CTown around 2006, I think. (Not sure about that gap there, if there was one.) CTown seems to have gutted the store when they opened and despite the store's strange layout and size (it's six aisles, but extremely deep), it's a very nice store. All the fixtures, flooring, and shelving seem to be newer than 2001, pointing to either an extensive later reno...

A Former A-Frame Acme? Superfood Marketplace - Allentown, PA Most of the time I at least have a vague idea of the history of the stores I post. This one, I must confess, I know virtually nothing about. It appears to be an A-Frame Acme with a new facade on the front, but I have no evidence that it ever was. I do know more recently, it was a Valley Farm Market which closed in 2015. Superfood, an Elizabeth, NJ-based chain of three stores, bought the store and reopened after some renovations. As far as I know, they've made it more of a standard grocery store. The bakery department was removed, but the store now has produce, deli, meat, seafood, hot food, and salad bar. At 50,000 square feet, this store is much smaller than Valley Farm's other location in Bethlehem, but much larger than Superfood's other locations, in Elizabeth (about 15,000-20,000) and Middlesex, NJ (35,000). It's a very nice, clean store but some customers have been complaining about the high prices....

Step Back in Time... Check out these photos of NJ Supermarkets! 2016 Album 2015 Album 2014 Album Maybe in the future I'll do a comparison then-and-now with some of these stores (we'll see!). More exciting stuff is on its way, so stay tuned.

Good Store, Awful Logo I: Superfresh Food World, Bloomfield, NJ Welcome to our new series, Good Store Awful Logo! Our first Good Store Awful Logo is the new Superfresh Food World in Bloomfield, NJ. Let's take a look at their logo before the store, so you can appreciate its full atrocity. Just take a minute and let it sink in. So at first glance, they took the Superfresh logo, got rid of the s-in-a-circle design, split it in half, and added their own Food World logo. But no! Compare their lettering in "Superfresh" to the official Superfresh logo from the Key Food website: Image from keyfood.com. Upon closer inspection, we see that the lettering is different. Compare the e's, for instance. Close but not the same! Now let's focus on the Food World logo in the center. Random palm trees off-center? Check. Black-and-white globe clip art? Check. Unreadable script? Check. Wings growing out of the word "Food"? Check. It sure looks like this logo was p...