LIDL
Opened: 2020
Opened: 2020
Previous Tenants: A&P > ACME Markets
Location: 199 Kinderkamack Rd, Park Ridge, NJ
Photographed: July 2020
It's time for our first LIDL store tour! LIDL entered the United States in 2017 and has been moving into quite a few vacant supermarket spaces. It's a little bit like ALDI, except completely unappealing and much worse. Ahem, journalistic integrity tells me I should actually describe the chain so I'm going to go with "larger format stores than ALDI, a weaker private label program, in-store bakeries, and a larger selection of nonfoods." Anyway, I didn't even realize this store had been taken over by LIDL when I visited; it was a centennial model A&P that had been extensively remodeled and expanded over the years by A&P, then taken over by ACME in 2015 and closed three years later.
Inside and outside (at least in the front), there's absolutely nothing left over from either of the former tenants. There's actually still a centennial store buried somewhere behind that new facade, though. To see the store in better days, check it out at Acme Style here. I will say, the setup here at the newer prototype of LIDL stores was more appealing than the older prototype, which we'll see a little later. The decor is certainly more attractive.
Produce and packaged deli are in the first two aisles, with meat and organic items in the back of the next aisle. Bakery and dairy line the back wall, with dairy continuing along the right side wall of the store. Frozen foods are in coffin cases in the last aisle.
Nice organic section here, although I'm not so sure about the slogan "organic for everyone," which seems awful close to "organic for all" from Albertsons' O Organics line.
An overview of the back wall area. I appreciate that here at least, all the junk is confined to one specific area. As we'll see, the older LIDLs had junk taking up way too much sales floor space. But come on, this isn't half as nice as the newest ALDIs.
Nice bakery section in the back here, but why in the name of all the grocery deities are most of the cases empty or nearly empty at midday on a Friday?
HABA and nonfoods in the second-to-last aisle.
Dairy/frozen in the last aisle, with a few registers taking up about half of the front wall...
It's a shame to see this store that once had so much personality and history be turned into a bland, unappealing store that clearly is not popular at all (you can see just a few scattered customers throughout my pictures). It's very hard to beat a ShopRite, and when there's a very good one just five minutes away, it takes an extremely skilled operator to thrive. LIDL isn't it. In this far northeastern corner of the state, it's near impossible to beat ShopRite, or the new Wegmans in Montvale. Up next we're going to see another store that tried and couldn't over on Grocery Archaeology!
The cases are empty on a Friday because of shrink / they don’t put much out in this store since it averages only $155,000 weekly. Terribly embarrassing volume.
ReplyDeleteMakes sense for shrink reasons but it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. The store doesn't put out a lot of merchandise because it's low-volume so there isn't enough to choose from so people don't shop there so the store is low-volume. I think the whole strategy needs to be rethought.
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