TOUR: ACME Markets - Edgewater, NJ

ACME Markets

Opened: 2015

Previous Tenants: Pathmark

Location: 481 River Rd, Edgewater, NJ

Photographed: June 2020

Acme Style has extensively covered this ACME up until the blog was discontinued, so make sure to read up on all of the past coverage here. I first visited this 70,000 square foot store back in late 2015 or early 2016 right when it first opened, and I was impressed. ACME has gotten better and worse and better and worse so many times that I kind of stopped frequenting their stores, but lately they've been the one that I go to every week. So back in June I decided to return to this store while checking out the new City Supermarket a few miles away in Fairview. Interestingly, despite the reset and remodel that happened just back in 2017, the store was being fully remodeled and reset again. The decor stayed in place, but every grocery item was being moved around and we'll see some serious structural changes going on. Given this store's past as a Pathmark, we enter to the grand aisle with produce on the left and deli/seafood on the right. Floral and pharmacy are to the left on the front wall, with nonfoods to the left, bakery/meat on the back wall, and frozen/dairy on the far right side.

And the store does look pretty great! The deli cases on the right side have been replaced, with the produce cases having been painted back when ACME moved in. Let's head to the left first...

Floral, customer service, and pharmacy in the front corner. The first grocery aisle all the way to the left is looking a bit sparse, as it seems ACME is moving paper goods out of this area...

If the reset is anything like the one going on in my ACME, it'll involve clearing out a lot of nonfoods items, expanding general grocery selection, and integrating natural/organic with the regular groceries instead of keeping them separated.

And that seems to be exactly what's going on here.

Natural/organic not looking so natural anymore. I do love organic garbage bags, though. This selection has been removed as the items are mixed in with their conventional counterparts, but for whatever reason, the Pathmark-era signage remains.

This is the second of three "This is your ACMEs" in the store.

Bakery here seems pretty small compared to other ACMEs, so that might be expanded too. My ACME, which was an A&P Fresh 2.0, had the bakery expanded significantly in the spring/summer 2020 remodel.

Looking back across the produce department.

And the back section. Cheeses are on the other side of this produce case to the right, which I believe ACME installed. Seafood and deli face that in an island.

The cases at my ACME's seafood department were also replaced, I'm wondering if they're going to do something similar here.

Deli and prepared foods in the front part of the island.

But here's the big change... the cafe is gone! The area was temporarily being used to house construction equipment and clearance items.

It'll be interesting to see what goes here, if anything.

Because of the grand aisle being in the middle of the store, the first grocery aisle on the right is actually aisle 10.

More reset going on in the international aisle -- a selection that my ACME has very much expanded in their reset. I've been impressed what I was able to find there.

Double-wide beverage aisle.

Meats on the back wall.

The store has 20 aisles in total, with half of 18 and all of 19 being frozen. Dairy lines both sides of 20.

With milk in the back corner, of course.

Pathmark's former bread alcove in the front corner is now soda.

Featuring the third and final "This is Your ACME." Moving over to the front end, we find it to be spacious with new registers. Also, self checkouts have been reinstalled.

That wraps up what felt like a very long tour of a very large store. We have one more store tomorrow before we finish our Bergen - Passaic group! Head about two miles north up to Fort Lee for tomorrow's store tour on The Independent Edition. (And just for a heads up... I've actually added a few special report and update posts for a few Bergen and Passaic stores on Friday as some bonus stores, so come back to check those out as well!)