TOUR: Seabra Foods - Ferry Plaza, Newark, NJ

Seabra Foods

Owner: Antonio Seabra

Opened: 2019

Previous Tenants: Pathmark > ACME

Cooperative: none

Location: 281-295 Ferry St, Ironbound, Newark, NJ

Photographed: August 2019

It's our third time visiting this store in the Ferry Plaza in the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark! We've previously seen it as an ACME and then closed while being prepared for Seabra. Today, we get to tour the flagship Seabra location, and the fourth Seabra in the Ironbound. See the Chestnut Street location and the other Ferry Street location on the blog as well! You might notice the low airplane in the above picture... we're less than a mile and a half from the Newark Airport, one of three international airports serving New York City. It's also the largest airport in New Jersey. And if anyone from out-of-state has had an unpleasant experience at the dinosaur of an airport, don't worry, we hate it too.

This Seabra Foods is unlike any other supermarket I've ever been in. At over 60,000 square feet, it's more than double the size of the next largest Seabra location, so about 1/3 of the location is dedicated to wholesale goods but is still open to the public. You enter to the right side, to produce in the front corner and what I'm assuming is a liquor store behind it (it hadn't yet opened at the time of my visit). Bakery and juice lines the rest of the first aisle, with frozen and meat lining the back wall. At the back left corner of the store is an enormous butcher, seafood, and salt fish department. The last aisles have dairy and additional frozen foods, with a large service deli and prepared foods department lining the last aisle and a cafe on the second floor. Beyond that is a wholesale department, with its own entrance and exit.

Produce is in the front corner, which you enter and make a right to see. This area would've been Pathmark's pharmacy and health and beauty in the grocery aisles.

The merchandising is beautiful here in the produce department. Every fixture in the store is new. As you can see from the ACME post, absolutely nothing is left from Pathmark or ACME.

Looking towards the right-side wall of the store from the produce department.

Looking along the front end from produce.

And a look across the front-end from the entrance area.

Jumping back over to the first aisle, where dry produce and juice line the aisle.

Packaged juice (like orange juice) is not in the dairy department at the other end of the store, but here instead. Slightly strange, but it works.

Meanwhile, the bakery department is at the end of this aisle, with a few small tables and chairs but we haven't gotten to the real cafe yet.

As usual, the specialty of the bakery is the bread and rolls.

Frozen and dairy line the back wall of the store.

Although the store is enormous, it doesn't feel like Seabra is in over its head. Each department is well thought out and complete, and there's a huge selection of all the groceries you could want -- but none of the telltale signs of overwhelmed supermarkets, like shelf after shelf of the same product. Above is one of the several international aisles. There's a focus on Portuguese and Latin foods, but Eastern European, Italian, Asian, and Middle Eastern foods are also represented.

There's a center aisle dividing the grocery aisles in half, since the store is very deep. Above we're looking from the first aisle to the dairy department.

And looking from the dairy aisles towards the first aisle.

Beautifully stocked new dairy cases, with international and organic selections throughout the whole store. For the record, Seabra Foods uses the Best Yet private label.

The dairy and frozen department is expansive, taking up six aisles (front/back of three).

I've never seen these fixtures before, and they're beautiful. Each dairy case is designed as an island with glass borders between the sides. Meanwhile, the frozen cases are a very futuristic-looking rounded style that I haven't seen either.

Frozen foods in the third-to-last aisle. The back of the dairy/frozen department has a gigantic butcher shop, seafood, and salt fish room, for bacalao (Spanish) or bacalhau (Portuguese), a type of salt cod that's very popular.

The seafood department extends in front of the bacalhau room, where the fish is salted and preserved in-store. I've seen the selections in many other supermarkets, but I've never been in one that makes its own.

Moving into the last aisle, international cheese and grab-and-go foods line the grocery aisle side, with frozen seafood and deli/prepared foods on the opposite side. Self-serve prepared foods bars line the middle of the aisle.

While I don't know what design firm was responsible for this store, it's amazing. I must say, the prepared foods aisle here is nearly identical to Whole Foods -- see West Orange, also a former Pathmark, for an example -- and that's a really good thing.

A beautiful deli and The Kitchen line the outside wall of the store.

This is some of the best supermarket food I've experienced. I had my lunch in the second floor cafe, which we'll see in a minute.

The cafe and coffee shop are above this section. A store entrance just to the left above brings customers to the prepared foods section and a staircase to the second floor, or the wholesale section to the left (behind the deli). In addition to the regular registers along the front wall of the store, there is a register for the prepared foods at that entrance and several for the wholesale section. In other words, the store is designed for high volume, and has registers for each service it offers.

Dee's Cafe, a coffee shop and seating area for the store, is up on the second floor. This supermarket is the first I've been to that offers trays, real plates, and real silverware for the food court...

This was my delicious Portuguese lunch of beef stew, chorizo and roasted vegetables, and fried sweet plantains over yellow rice!

Looking from the cafe to the back of the last few aisles, with butcher and seafood on the back wall.

Looking across the middle aisle of the store towards bakery in the first aisle.

And looking across the store towards the produce department and entrance on the front wall. The cafe also has an overlook into the front half of the wholesale area, which we'll be going to next.

This section is designed to sell to small bodega and restaurant owners in the area, who need to buy in bulk but not too large quantities. It's a good way to take up about 10-20,000 square feet, and maximize sales to a very different group of customers.

Entering through the cafe/wholesale door will bring you to this section of the store.

This section isn't for browsing, that much is for sure. But I'm sure there's a huge demand for this type of sales, given the enormous number of small stores and restaurants in the city.

Moving into the last wholesale aisle, we find three entrances to walk-in coolers.

The one towards the back is produce...

The middle one is meat and cold cuts.

And the front one is frozen foods.

The selection throughout the wholesale department is nearly all Portuguese and Latin products, with a few of the other basic staples. The supermarket, on the other hand, while it focuses on international foods, is still a complete supermarket with a variety of products and brands.

Looking at the wholesale department's front-end, before we head over to the main front-end of the store...

The front wall displays pictures of old scenes of Newark, while each register is named as a nearby street in the Ironbound.

This wraps up our tour of this spectacular store! Up next, our final Newark store and the only supermarket in the Ironbound that's neither a Seabra Foods nor a Seabra's Market (an unrelated chain owned by a different branch of the family). Come back tomorrow to check it out!