Today's Snapshot is a longtime Pathmark-turned-Stop & Shop.
It definitely still has that distinctive Pathmark look! Stop & Shop put very little effort into these conversions, and it really shows in locations like this. Although the decor was replaced (barely), much of the rest of the store stayed the same -- same flooring and ceiling, same lighting, same fixtures, same layout. It's likely that larger renovations are in the works, especially for some of the more profitable locations.
This particular location did not have the famous Pathmark stripe, so Stop & Shop didn't have to redo the facade at all. Just install a new sign. Even less work went into the cart corrals...
That's right, on a sunny day you can still see Pathmark through the Stop & Shop decal! The interesting thing about this store is that it immediately bordered a very small 1950s A&P, just over the municipal line into Maplewood, which you can tour over on Acme Style here. The Stop & Shop is located at 407 Valley St, South Orange, NJ.
Photographed July 2017
I suppose the limited renovations make sense for a couple reasons.
ReplyDeleteFirst being that they had a number of stores (about 25, if I remember correctly) to convert from A&P/Pathmark to Stop & Shop all in a fairly short time (and most times they try to keep from closing the stores for more than a couple days), making it hard to do too much at any one store.
Second would be that (as we've seen with Acme, at least), sometimes it turns out that they take stores that seem good but turn out to be not so good. So this way they don't spend money on renovations until they get a bit of history to see which ones will do well and which (if any) won't.
Yes, that's true. It can be a smart move, but at the same time, it can be extremely helpful to start completely new. That's one of the mistakes ACME has been accused of in their conversions -- that they're essentially running A&Ps with a new sign on the front. I don't disagree with that.
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