This 9300 square foot gourmet market is located very close to yesterday's
Seasons, but it's a little hard to get to from the other mall as you cross a street and an overpass to get between them. Balducci's is a standby gourmet store owned by Parsippany, NJ-based
Kings Food Markets, though while Kings tends to operate 20,000 square foot upscale supermarkets (to generalize), Balducci's stores are half the size and far more gourmet-centered.
I've gotta say, this is not my type of store but man is it beautiful. Top-notch decor and presentation throughout the whole store. That said, the quality is unremarkable and most of the prices are just out of control. The store is set up so that you walk through it kind of in a horseshoe, starting at the bottom right with produce, then passing through deli, meat, and seafood, with dairy at the back, and the left side of the horseshoe being grocery, bakery, and checkouts.
Tile flooring makes for a very nice touch, and the tiles are small enough that they're not noisy when carts roll over them. It's worth noting that this is actually the same decor package that Kings uses, although far more deluxe. You can see the
Kings stores' decor is mostly nothing more than a fresh coat of paint and some new lettering on the walls.
And this deluxe decor is gorgeous, such as this impressive deli and prepared foods island. Meat and seafood line the wall to the right.
Balducci's does not use a storebrand, although both Kings and Balducci's have distribution contracts with Wakefern Food, which runs ShopRite. Scarsdale is home to a very nicely updated
ShopRite, which I unfortunately did not make it to on this day. I do have two excellent Westchester ShopRites photographed and they will be coming soon!
Dairy at the back of the store, where it transitions to grocery. I'd estimate a little more than half of the sales floor is dedicated to perishables.
Notice that the grocery shelving is just regular shelving instead of the standard grocery gondolas that most stores have. It probably makes store resets much easier.
There are maybe five very short grocery aisles with almost exclusively high-end and gourmet products.
A pretty solid in-store bakery and coffee shop leads us to the cafe in the front corner of the store. It's empty given that I visited the store at prime dinnertime, so while the store was busy, everyone was grabbing prepared foods or ingredients on their way home from work.
The checkouts run into the middle of the store, dividing it in half. Produce lines the opposite side of the registers.
Again, this area is beautiful (if a little small, but that's just the store's size). While this store is no doubt gorgeous, it's just prohibitively expensive in my opinion for standard-quality items. Anyway, come back tomorrow for an amazing renovation at a store we've actually seen before!
Balducci's Food Lover's Market
15 Palmer Ave, Scarsdale, NY
Photographed March 2020
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