Market 32 by Price Chopper
Opened: 2018
Previous Tenants: Price Chopper
Location: 39 N. Plank Rd, Newburgh, NY
Photographed: December 2019
As seems to happen so often with me, a quick bathroom stop on a road trip became a store tour here in Newburgh, NY, which is just across the Hudson River from Beacon. This was on a December New Jersey-to-Massachusetts road trip on the day of a snowstorm. As you can see, it was starting to stick at the time of this stop.
This store is a standard former Price Chopper to Market32 conversion, similar to what will eventually (?) make it through the entire chain. The rebranding began several years ago intended to modernize the Price Chopper stores and reduce the discount associations of the Price Chopper banner. From my observations, the conversions have been a major success — except, of course, for the awful logo. This 72,000 square foot store shows the potential that these enormous Price Chopper stores have.
Based on a comparison of this store to my local Price Chopper, the layout was not changed enormously for the renovation, though the decor is all brand new (and I love it). You enter to a spacious grand aisle with produce running along the left side. The front corner has a bakery-coffee shop (selling things like cakes and pastries) with a seating area, then prepared foods and the rest of bakery (things like bread) on the right-side wall. Deli, seafood, and meat line the back wall, with frozen and dairy at the far end. Beer is in the front corner, with pharmacy in an island facing the checkouts in the first few aisles. Floral is on the front wall facing.
Enter and turn right for the Patisserie and cafe, with gorgeous cakes in equally beautiful cases. Floral is opposite the entrance...
I'm assuming pre-renovation that the floral department would've been where the Patisserie is now, with this area being sales. Again, that's how it's set up in my Price Chopper.
Cafe in the front corner, with rolls and bagels facing. If you notice the stock is a little light, which you'll see throughout the store, don't forget that there is an impending snowstorm which will trap me on a Connecticut backroad through the Bigelow Hollow State Park, but never mind.
Prepared foods along the right side wall of the store. All of the fixtures have been replaced, but this is approximately the same layout that the former Price Chopper would've had.
Looking across to produce beyond the chicken wing and soup bars.
The service bakery consists only of bread, with other baked goods displayed on the tables in front. I've purchased the breads at a different Market32 location and they are excellent.
Moving on to deli and cheese on the back wall...
Certainly a beautiful display! We'll hope they can keep it stocked here. My Price Chopper was built with a gourmet cheese island which, for as long as I've been shopping at the store, has been stocked with absolutely anything other than gourmet cheeses.
It's worth noting that this store competes with a very outdated SRS ShopRite just half a mile north on NY-32. That store is scheduled to be replaced soon, but even the newest SRS prototypes aren't as deluxe as the new Market32 stores.
Seafood and butcher counters along the back wall, with a Chef's Table kitchen supply department in between.
The first three grocery aisles are short, with the pharmacy department in the front half.
The service pharmacy faces the front end (checkouts), with personal care items in the back and medicine and vitamins facing the front.
Heading back to the back wall, we see a nice meat department located under a lower ceiling.
And unlike many remodels and even new prototype stores, the Market32 redesign includes rethinking grocery aisles and departments. The only other big-chain concept of doing something like that I can think of is the highly unsuccessful A&P Fresh 3.0 (scroll down to the last store). The Market32 version is much more successful, grouping products in more specialty-angled displays.
Many of the aisles have special displays like these, grouping similar products together. Quite a few aisles are split up in this way, but are still basically grocery aisles.
Check out this pasta display — sauce in an island display, specialty pasta in special shelving highlighting the gourmet products (to the left), and even refrigerated fresh pasta right in the grocery aisle instead of the dairy department (endcap straight ahead)! Absolutely fantastic merchandising.
Milk at the back of the last few aisles.
The third-to-last aisle has one row of freezers, the second-to-last aisle has freezers on both sides, and the last aisle has freezers on one side and dairy cases on the outside wall.
Beautiful cases which are all brand-new!
I love the neutral color scheme in this part of the store. This decor package gets it right in that some parts are extremely colorful, bright, and exciting, while other parts are more understated. It doesn't fall into the trap of being too drab.
Beer in the front corner.
A beautiful and un-cluttered front end! I'm not familiar with the drop ceiling along the front end, and I don't know whether that was installed during the Market32 renovation. My Price Chopper has an exposed front end. Anyway, that wraps up our tour of the Newburgh Market32!
Great store! From what I've seen over the past several years, these Market32 conversions all look pretty good. It's nice to see the consistency of quality in the conversions; normally that would very quickly be skimped on by other retailers, especially considering how expensive these renovations have to be.
ReplyDeleteSeparate from the décor, I agree that the new merchandising innovations are interesting. I particularly like the kitchenware alcove in-between the meat and seafood service counters; that's something I've never seen before. The aisle innovations are also interesting but I'd have to become familiar with them in person in order to be able to express an opinion. From the pictures they look similar to what Target has been doing with its (non-grocery) merchandise in more recent, modern remodels, which I'm not a huge fan of.
For sure! I'm up here in Worcester, MA now and the Market 32 at the north end of the city is easily the nicest supermarket in the city. I can't wait until my local Price Chopper is switched over... although it's also an incredibly low-volume store so it might honestly just be closed eventually.
DeleteThe renovations must be very expensive but also they're done over time. Many of the merchandising changes are implemented over the course of months (the non-Market 32ed stores in the Worcester area have gotten several of these upgrades as well).
Stores around the early 2000s (at least up to 2004) had drop ceilings around the perimeter of the sales floor with exposed ceilings in the middle. Price Chopper retains these drop ceilings in Market32 remodels. This store replaced an older store in the Mid Valley Mall next to it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the history here!
DeleteOne thing they did in some (but not all) of the renovations (along with a couple of the newer stores built just prior to the branding change) is to move the pharmacy to a corner near the checkouts, with most (or all) of the HABA items in shorter aisles that run between the pharmacy and the checkout lanes. Not sure why some have and others not - one was sort of obvious, as it allowed a drive up lane on the end of the building, but another is in one front corner but the drive up is on the opposite side of the building! Then others didn't move it (like this one) and at least one didn't do a drive up either (which on that store could have been done easily had it moved to the front left corner).
ReplyDeleteThey started with the Market Bistro (Latham, NY), which was a test store (any many suggest their try to create a version of Wegmans, which many would like but won't come to the Albany area, be it just market or an agreement that may or may not exist between the two families), then took what they found to be the best ideas (save for the logo - the Market 32 name is logical, being they first opened in 1932 as Central Markets) and rolled those out to the other stores as they remodel.
Exactly. As much as I do dislike the Market 32 logo, and to be fair it's growing on me, the overall plan was very well-executed. You hit the nail on the head with the best ideas from Market Bistro and Price Chopper to create a great hybrid store. I must say, I like the prices at Market 32 and the quality is much better -- if only because of higher turnover -- than my Price Chopper.
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