Super Foodtown of Caldwell
Owner: Jack Shakoor / Jack's Supermarkets
Opened: 1980s(?)
Previous Tenants: Hy's Foodtown
Cooperative: Allegiance Retail Services
Location: 370 Bloomfield Ave, Caldwell, NJ
Photographed: May 2019 and January 2021
We're returning to the Super Foodtown of Caldwell, NJ, after our store tour back in June 2018, to check out some of the new(-ish) graphics along the front of the store, which you can see above as most of the storefront is a blank wall. A nice touch! (I also wanted a daytime picture.) Near the entrance is a photo that's circulated both in historical photo books and on the internet, depicting Hy's Foodtown which previously occupied the space.
Now for a look inside. I visited briefly in January of 2021 and was very surprised and pleased to see the store is receiving a remodel inside. Although it was certainly old on the inside, it was maintained very well. As we'll see, there are more deluxe touches going in, and the store had a healthy crowd at the time of my visit -- all good signs.
The layout is mostly the same, except this back area is walled in for an expanded bakery department (behind me here) in an island that used to be customer service. Customer service is on the front wall near the registers. So now there's only one entrance to the separate room with the registers, customer service, and health and beauty at the front. We can also see the ceiling being worked on, new flooring, and all new fixtures in the deli. There's a soup/salad bar going in, which is just visible behind the shopper at left.
Moving into what amounts to the grand aisle. The registers are on the other side of the wall to the left here, with the entrance to that area straight ahead next to the new beer coolers. Wine, which hadn't fully been stocked yet, is now along the register/HABA side of the produce aisle, with a new gourmet cheese case at the back of the produce department. If you look in the older pictures, you'll see that most of the produce cases were single-tier, so there's the same amount of selection in a smaller sales floor space now.
I've always loved this store and it's looking better than ever. The selection has also shifted more upscale.
Frozen foods take up the first grocery aisle, which is not numbered. (Produce is on the other side of the wall to the right here.) Meats line the back wall.
The store is not quite as small as it looks here, since the wall we see straight ahead is not the outside wall of the store. Because of an expansion, the last few aisles are shorter than the rest. There are 7 aisles total, plus the freezer aisle, plus the produce aisle, plus the room with checkouts and HABA.
Other than a much-needed flooring replacement, the grocery aisles look basically the same. It remains to be seen whether this store is going to get the same decor that Wayne got in its renovation (which I assume also went into the North Arlington location, which re-opened last month), or whether the previous decor is going to stay in place.
The store has been updated little by little along with the renovation, so these freezer cases (ice cream is in the last aisle, with the rest of frozen in the first aisle... which is kind of the second aisle. Got it?) and the updated dairy cases in the front were installed about a year before the other updates.
The dairy case that runs along the front wall here has not been updated, but I don't know whether it will since it's in very good condition despite being clearly very old. You can also take a look at how this store maximizes the space it has by having lots of products but very few facings of each. And at the far end of the case we can see the doorway that leads into the registers/customer service/HABA room. And while there's a lot about this store that's new...
...here we see an early 90s Foodtown shopping cart! While that's not all that long ago, keep in mind that this store switched to IGA in the mid 90s, then back to Foodtown in the late 90s. So that means this cart is actually four logos ago -- it was this, then briefly IGA, then the late 90s Foodtown logo, then the 2000-era Foodtown logo we see on the store now. I've shopped at this store for more than 10 years, and never once before seen this cart, so maybe it was used as storage in the basement or something and was only unearthed because of moving stuff around for the remodel. Who knows! Anyway, I'm glad to see a good investment is being put into this great store. Our next stop is going to be just to the east on Grocery Archaeology!
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