TOUR: ShopRite - Rochelle Park, NJ

ShopRite of Rochelle Park

Owner: Irv Glass / Glass Gardens

Opened: 1955

Previous Tenants: none

Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.

Location: 220 W Passaic St, Rochelle Park, NJ

Photographed: July 2016

We're heading to our first New Jersey Glass Gardens store here in Rochelle Park! (Not to be confused with Roselle Park, to the south near Elizabeth.) Originally the Glass Brothers Supermarket, and today the Glass Gardens-owned ShopRite of Rochelle Park, this store looks to have been expanded from an original 28,000 square foot supermarket to a 74,000 square foot superstore, though it's so crowded it feels much, much smaller.

Its tight location requires it to have two parking lots, one shown here on the side of the store and one on the front.

The Glass family owns about a dozen supermarkets, including the massive Gateway Center ShopRite.

You enter on the corner of the building, walking along this wall in the produce department. Deli and prepared foods are at the end of the first aisle, with seafood and meat on the back wall. Frozen takes up the third- and second-to-last aisles, with dairy in the last aisle. Pharmacy is on the front wall right next to the entrance. I believe the bakery is in the front left corner, although I'm kind of blanking on that.

Entering under the pyramid corner piece. The store has been remodeled since my visit in 2016, and various interior photos are available on Google Maps.

Although the store is enormous and relatively new (as far as the latest expansion and layout update), it is not set up to have a grand aisle. Produce is only the first extra-wide aisle, with service departments around the perimeter.

Pharmacy on the front wall. Here you can also see how crowded the store gets at peak times.

Prepared foods on the back wall. Chinese food is in the back corner to the right, with the rest of the hot food bar continuing to the left of that, and soup and sandwiches next.

I've always been a fan of Glass Gardens' prepared foods. Compared to other ShopRite members, they're cheap, fresh, and very tasty. Village Super Market has some impressive prepared foods departments but they can be very expensive.

Hot foods bar looking a little cleaned-out on a weekend afternoon after the lunch rush.

Looking along the back of the store. You can see some parts of the floor are in pretty rough shape, but that's probably just because of the ridiculously high volume this store does.

Packaged deli lines the back wall on an angle between prepared foods and service deli.

Ah, what a color scheme.

Sushi is in an island opposite packaged deli. Here we're looking back towards the first aisle.

Service deli is next on the back wall.

Grocery aisles opposite. You can see how the angle of the back wall means most of the aisles are different lengths from each other. And this was my first time seeing these light fixtures in red, which only is around the perimeter. To the right, you can see the grocery aisles have the same fixtures in white.

A blurry look along the second half of the back wall, with meat and seafood.

Seafood department next to deli, which looks to have slightly newer decor than the rest of the store.

Because meat only takes up about half the back wall, a lot of the selection is displayed in a low case in the middle of the back aisle.

Frozen meat and cold cuts on the back wall in the corner. The third- and second-to-last aisles are frozen foods.

Milk and juice in the back corner, with the rest of dairy continuing along the last aisle.

Moving into the front corner, there's an alcove with more frozen foods, mostly ice cream. I believe also this corner is where the bakery is.

As we have seen, although this store is huge at over 70,000 square feet, we don't get a sense of the enormous size because it's very broken-up and very crowded. We do get a true sense of the size on the front end, with the 25 or so registers lining an endless walkway...

In fact, the front-end is so expansive that there is actually a sign directing customers to the exit.

Beyond that is customer service and pharmacy between the entrance and exit.

As you can see here, what is probably one of the busiest pass-throughs in the store (from produce/entrance to front-end/pharmacy) is incredibly narrow. This store is absolutely packed to the gills with merchandise and displays. And, of course, shoppers! We're hanging around the Paterson suburbs for a couple of days, so head over to The Independent Edition for tomorrow's Look Inside!