99 Ranch Market
Owner: Roger Chen
Opened: 2016
Previous Tenants: Pathmark
Cooperative: none
Location: 561 US-1, Edison, NJ
Photographed: January and July 2020
The rather unusual exterior is actually left over from Pathmark. It matches the rest of the mall, so I'm assuming it's a design the landlord created rather than anything from the supermarket's corporate designs.
You enter on the left, with a vendor selling health and beauty items in the front left corner. Produce takes up the rest of the left side, with refrigerated goods, seafood, and meat along the back wall. Aisles 7-8 are frozen foods, with dairy in aisle 9. Prepared foods take up the outside of the last aisle, aisle 21, with bakery on the front wall.
Gorgeous first impression. This store has Kam Man beat by a mile, and is more on the level of Lotte Plaza (which, of course, targets a different region of Asia).
With the exception of H Mart, most of our Asian supermarkets in the northern NJ area were not particularly wonderful, so the addition of 99 Ranch and Lotte Plaza is very welcome.
Several small vendors along the front wall of the store.
A stylishly retro series of custom-designed signs lead us into the grocery aisles from produce.
A trend I'm noticing (maybe just because I'm paying more attention to it now) is the combination of polished concrete with a drop ceiling. I mostly see polished concrete floors with open ceilings, but this store and Lotte Plaza both have them, along with the assorted Food Bazaars we've toured and several others.
The grocery aisles are not quite as beautiful as the produce department, but still looking great. Every fixture we see in the store is brand-new.
Frozen foods in the same setup we saw at Lotte Plaza here, oddly only about 1/3 of the way through the store. Dairy is on one side of the next aisle...
It's very odd to see dairy in aisle 9 in a 21-aisle store. I'm also not used to seeing such large selections of mainstream American dairy products in an Asian store. By the way, for these mainstream American items, 99 Ranch uses Best Yet storebrand products.
Back to the back wall with seafood and meat. The decor still looks fantastic, and better than anything Pathmark ever would've had, but it would look even better with an open ceiling like produce.
Meat is next along the back wall.
The lit lettering and grass textures along the meat wall here give it a fun look.
Prepared foods line the last aisle, with the cafe in the front corner. An outside restaurant, which seems to not yet have been open at the time of my visit (or else temporarily closed) is on the front wall, with the bakery just next to it.
The bakery is an interesting combination of Asian and mainstream American products, with some great double chocolate chip cookies by the way. There are a few other vendors along the front wall, with checkouts in front of them.
We're looking towards the last aisle in this picture. I really liked the endcaps on the grocery aisles...
Nicely stocked but I also like the signs above the products. Very upscale in design. One more look at the front end before we head out...
That's all for Route 1! We'll be taking a quick detour to the west to see two stores in Highland Park up next, starting with the store downtown here on The Market Report, before passing through our last two Edison stores and moving on to Piscataway. Stay tuned!
Very cool place!
ReplyDeleteSure is!
DeletePerhaps the larger selection of mainstream items is just due to this being larger than many similar type stores are (thus something to fill in that extra space)?
ReplyDeleteAlso might explain having the other vendors in front (unless those existed with Pathmark also, like they did in other stores but in a more separated form like over in Avenel where you walked through the little shops to get to the supermarket?).
That could be, although from what I understand 99 Ranch does tend to have larger-format stores (of 50,000+ square feet). I don't know whether the outside storefronts were also here when the supermarket was Pathmark, but I would be inclined to say that they weren't.
DeleteWhen I lived in California, there was basically a 99 Ranch market in every town. They were regarded as the nicer, cleaner Asian supermarkets
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's the same impression I get here with their NJ stores.
Delete