Update: CTown Supermarkets - Passaic, NJ

CTown Supermarkets

Owner: Celda Diaz

Opened: 2015

Previous Tenants: Pioneer Supermarkets > Popular Supermarket

Cooperative: Krasdale

Location: 602 Main Ave, Passaic, NJ

Photographed: August 2019

We're wrapping up center city Passaic to visit this newly renovated store. We'd originally seen it in progress in October 2017, and you can see the "before" pictures (along with some history of the store) here. The L-shaped, 17,000 square foot store's layout has been very significantly changed -- instead of two sets of registers at the back entrance and front entrance, there's now one set that runs along the whole side of the store. The former checkout area in the front is now a deli-bakery-hot food department, with the former checkouts in the front now holding an expansion of the produce department. The long-term renovation was met with an equally extensive renovation (but not expansion) over at Compare Foods a block and a half north.

The store is mostly oriented for those entering through the rear entrance, facing the parking lot. The produce and meat/seafood departments take up most of this back part, with checkouts lining the wall to the right in the above picture. Meat and dairy line the left-side wall, with deli/bakery in the front part. Frozen foods line the right-side wall in the front of the store. Let's head in and see the spectacular new interior...

What an upgrade from the old produce department! I said in the October 2017 post: "Obviously a drop ceiling has been removed for the renovation, but I really like how the store looks with its ceiling exposed. They'd have to paint it, of course." Well, they did just that!

An overview of the beautiful new produce department.

More produce and other refrigerated items on the other side of the department. People exiting the store walk on the other side of this case, where pictures of food and quotes about food in various languages line the wall.

Produce in some very cool custom-designed bins continue into the center of the store. Notice the street signs on some of the poles featuring local streets' names, a great touch! The decor in this store is completely custom, and I haven't seen it in any other store.

Bulk foods remain at the end of the produce department opposite the butcher counter. You can see the new front end lining the wall to the right above, with some grocery aisles beginning behind bulk foods.

I love these department signs! All the fixtures are new.

Aisles 1-5 are grocery aisles, with lower shelving, run from side-to-side of the store from the checkouts (behind me in the above picture) to the meat department. Beautiful aisle markers.

Seafood on the side of the butcher counter. Now continuing into the first aisle (aisle 6), which runs along the side of the store opposite the registers, with the meat department and dairy.

The flooring, ceiling, lighting, fixtures (cases/shelving), and decor have all been installed new. So yeah... pretty much everything is brand-new. And it's beautiful!

Looking across the store's middle dividing aisle. Because it's so deep and narrow, the aisles have to be split like this. Frozen foods line the opposite side of the store.

An awesome look here in the Dairy Market. Custom aisle markers, great decor with nice colors, and a great ceiling design.

The deli department is at the front of the store, where there is an entrance. Also featured here are a hot food bar and a juice bar, which were closed at the time of my early-evening visit.

The design of this area, which is all new, is outstanding. The lighting, fixtures, decor, and product selection are top-notch. Plus, it's very convenient that one of the store's most-used features, the deli and prepared foods section, is right inside one of the entrances on the city street. Baked goods line the front wall.

A look down the international aisle, about halfway across the store, from the front entrance area.

Some of the grocery aisles are polished concrete, others are wood-look flooring. Either way, they're extremely attractive and because they're similar in appearance and color, it makes for a very unified experience throughout.

Moving into the last aisle, we find a lower ceiling and scaled-down decor to accommodate stock placed above the cases. There are offices above this section of the store, and the exit hallway runs behind these cases.. And the enclosed area I had wondered about previously in the last aisle makes more sense now. It's now stocked with health and beauty goods, which can be accessed from behind by an employee. That's very smart -- in relatively high-crime locations, like Passaic, the more expensive health and beauty items are frequently put behind a counter, but it can be hard to see them all. In this case, you can see exactly what you want through the glass, then ask for it at customer service right next to it! The products are stocked on either side of the room, with windows on both sides so that you can see all the products.

Now moving on to the registers, a full-wall mural of old Passaic photos thanks us for shopping with CTown...

From here, you can exit to the right (St. Francis Way, the parking lot), or to the left (Main Avenue, the street entrance).

And while the exit layout makes a lot of sense, it does leave a rather unfortunate long hallway between the registers and either exit.

The long hallway is, however, broken up by various quotes from famous figures. Some have to do with food directly, and some don't.

This one, which is printed in multiple languages along the wall, struck me in particular. I like to think this store is the owners' way of gently shaking the world -- by investing what's obviously a huge amount of money to build a quality, pleasant supermarket in the center of a city many chains have long ignored for its high crime rate and low income rate. But who knows if they were actually thinking that. We're going to cross NJ-21 to an isolated corner of the city which is also a peninsula in the Passaic River for a large former supermarket tomorrow on Grocery Archaeology!