ACME Markets
Opened: 2016
Previous Tenants: A&P (1960s-2016)
Location: 1201 High Ridge Rd, Stamford, CT
Photographed: May 2019
We saw the ACME in Shrub Oak, NY about a month ago, which is a former A&P Centennial model that ACME took over in A&P's 2015-16 bankruptcy. It's a nicely maintained Fresh 1.0 store that ACME seems to be taking good care of. But this store is deeeeeeeeeluxe -- even if it's only 21,000 square feet and the only significant addition made to the store is two loading docks in the back. It had the A&P Fresh 3.0 renovation, which ACME modified by painting the ceiling white when they moved in.
Soon thereafter, ACME did a full remodel on the place, bringing it to a very nicely done Quality Built treatment. While A&P went very modern with the 3.0, ACME has changed the store to a much warmer feel, with softer colors, wood-look flooring, and the old photos of the city that make up the backbone of Quality Built.
You enter to an expanded produce department, which now takes up the front corner of the store and continues down the first aisle. Because the foyer is too small here, the normal Quality Built entrance sign has been relocated to a hanging decor element.
Quality built adapts very nicely to this smaller store environment. Deli lines the rest of the first aisle, with service seafood at the back of the first aisle, meat on the back wall, and dairy and bakery in the last aisle. Frozen takes up the last aisle and a half.
Quite the floral display for a very small store! I know the wood flooring was installed by ACME, but I would assume the rest of the flooring is original to the Fresh decor package.
The Fresh 3.0 tile backsplash and high-end display cases look beautiful with the Quality Built upgrade...
Looking good -- and the corner deli is even in a corner!
You know it's a deluxe store when it's only 21,000 square feet but has service seafood and in-store bakery! Looks like we're missing a Lancaster decal here, perhaps it hadn't gone up yet. As we'll see, the other meat sign farther along the back wall did get one.
Wood flooring continues down aisle 2, but not all of the grocery aisles.
Check out those old-fashioned air vents in the ceiling! Aisle 4 runs down the middle of the store, so it makes sense they'd be placed here. As was standard in Centennial stores, there are 8 aisles here.
New Lancaster decal for this sign! You can see the old one here at Saddle Brook. I've never heard of an ACME getting the old Lancaster sign in Quality Built and then getting that replaced with the new one, but it's possible that's what we're seeing here.
Looking back towards aisle 1.
Frozen foods in aisle 7. All the fixtures are very new, but I'm pretty sure they were installed by A&P in the Fresh 3.0 renovation. Clearly A&P put a lot of money into this store and ACME is continuing to! The nearest (and only) competition in this very upscale neighborhood is a Trader Joe's, which probably explains it.
Dairy and frozen in the last aisle. And unlike most A&P conversions, Stamford got the deluxe bread display in the bakery!
And the tiny service bakery counter is in the front corner, with more great tile and displays.
That wraps up our tour here, and it's our last store in Stamford! Our next stop is just to the west in Greenwich, to see three stores before we move on back to New York.
Oh and... all three posts will be going up tomorrow, two on The Market Report and one on The Independent Edition. This will wrap up our Connecticut coverage by tomorrow so we can celebrate a very special day on Thursday with some very special content. Stay tuned!
Very deluxe store indeed! Looks great. I especially dig the way the old A&P tile at the bakery interacts with the color of the "Fresh" sign above it. Meat and seafood would probably have the same effect if the blue Lancaster sign had been there. (I like the new design of that, too.) Not seeing it as much for the deli, but that's only a minor complaint and also simply a personal preference.
ReplyDeleteVery good point. I think that's less intentional and more simply that the same colors tend to be used for the same departments across chains.
DeleteYep, exactly. Sometimes it works great! Others, well... :P
DeleteI worked at this location back in 1991-94, not long after this A&P's upgrade from traditional Centennial brick & mortar and orange & red motif to a hybrid green grey and white Food Emporium Hybrid. I was assigned to produce, where my responsibilities included crisping and wrapping leaf vegetables, and sweeping and maintaining the produce customer area.
ReplyDeleteLet's just say I learned a lot of supermarket 'backroom humour' from my years there during college, as well as some street smarts from a clerk named Dwight next door in the Deli.
Thanks for your memories!
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