TOUR: Supremo Food Market - The Heights, Jersey City, NJ

Supremo Foodmarket
Owner: Eddie Trujillo

Opened: late 1990s

Previous Tenants: Met Foodmarkets

Cooperative: none

Location: 323 Palisade Ave, The Heights, Jersey City, NJ

Photographed: December 2020

Our final store here in The Heights in Jersey City is the Supremo Food Market! The Plainfield, NJ-based chain has 14 locations in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and the latest Supremo that we saw is the Irvington location, though that store is about 10,000 square feet larger than this 26,000 square foot store. I'm not entirely sure on the history of this store, although I do know it was the second Supremo after Elizabeth opened in 1996. Previously it was a Met Foodmarket, according to a former Jersey City resident who lived in this neighborhood and found the Met Foodmarket too dirty for his tastes. The store appears to be based around an original 11,000 square foot arched-roof building, though I don't know whether it has been a supermarket for its whole life.

The gray, rainy day I visited wasn't doing the storefront any favors, but it's looking much better than its original appearance. We can also see the previous facade in that picture, with a little bit of it poking out on the right here. The store was remodeled around 2010 inside and outside, and has continued to change as the neighborhood gentrifies; this is probably the most upscale Supremo except perhaps CitiGrocer, which they also own, in Elizabeth.

As we see, the produce department (while not huge) is larger than Stop & Shop's. It has a larger selection, too, with more Latin produce, a selection of organic produce, vegetarian and vegan meat substitutes, and things like organic iced tea and cold brew coffee and so on. Stop & Shop has none of that, nor does it have the service departments taking up the back part of the grand aisle. Seafood is on the left side wall (where we can see the blue wall above), deli on an angle in the back corner, and meats lining the back wall. Frozen lines one side of aisle 7 and one side of aisle 8, with dairy lining the outside of aisle 8. There's a space previously occupied by a pharmacy in the front corner opposite the entrance which is now snacks and chips.

This Supremo puts juice in the produce department instead of the dairy aisle -- my guess is that it saves space in the dairy aisle. The service departments are here in the back corner, although the hot food bar and seating area had been closed temporarily for coronavirus...

Nice seafood counter! Continuing to the right of deli along the back wall is the service butcher, with packaged meats on the rest of the back wall.

The flooring looks great in this store, to the extent that I wonder if it was redone at some point after the full store remodel. If not, they sure take good care of it.

The grocery aisles look very good, although I wish there weren't so many boxes of stock sitting out. The store, like Stop & Shop, was very busy though, so they might have just been preparing for a rush at the end of the day.

Supremo is the spot I always find random stuff I've been looking for but I can never find elsewhere. In a few of their locations, like this one, they have a weirdly good vegetarian selection (like products I can't find at ShopRite or ACME or, in some cases, even Whole Foods) and that's quite helpful since I have a few family members who are vegetarian.

Aisle 7 with one side of frozen cases. The other side of this aisle also has freezer cases...

Looks like the ceiling could use a good paint job here, but otherwise the store looks great. I like the tile on the posts -- that's almost identical to what we saw at the Kings in Hoboken. Is it possible that the same design firm did these stores? The Supremo decor comes from DY Design, and I know another DY Design store uses the same font that Kings uses... so I suppose it's possible, but I'd expect better from DY Design than that bland barely-decor that Kings has in its stores.

Former pharmacy, now snacks and chips, in the front corner. That sign really should be taken down because otherwise you wouldn't even notice.

A look at the front end, looking back to produce in the front corner. It's pretty hard to tell anything about the past expansions or history of the store from the interior, since the ceiling and flooring have all been redone consistently across the store (possibly when Supremo or even Met moved in).

One more front-end shot from when I was waiting on line to purchase my four random items. I don't even remember what they were, I just know they were cool things I couldn't find anywhere else. That wraps it up for this Supremo, but we do have one more store back at Journal Square here in Jersey City before we move on to our next group. Come back tomorrow to check it out!