TOUR: ACME Markets - Fair Haven, NJ

ACME Markets
Opened: early 1950s

Previous Tenants: none

Location: 576 River Rd, Fair Haven, NJ

Photographed: December 2020

It's our first ACME tour of the day! (If, of course, Blogger is kind to me and posts my posts in the right order.) We have two ACMEs today, just over a mile from each other. This is the more northern one, here in downtown Fair Haven, with our second a little to the south in downtown Little Silver. Definitely check out our Little Silver tour too, but let's focus on Fair Haven for now. At just 17,000 square feet, this is one of the smallest still-operating ACMEs, having opened in the early 1950s. You can see Acme Style's past coverage, including history of the store, here. We can enter in the front or the back of this small strip mall. I'm gonna skip my usual layout description, instead linking to Acme Style's floor plan. Heading in, as of last December, the Quality Built colors were up on the walls but the Albertsons Marketplace signage remained. The exterior remodel had been completed.

I must say I am not particularly proud of my pictures here. There were a lot of employees and I felt a bit out of sorts in the store, I'm not sure why. It's a very nice store, and we can see here that the Quality Built-era fixtures have come into the produce department.

Notice the Quality Built colors having been put up on the walls behind the existing decor. I'm fairly certain that it's only temporary and full Quality Built has since been installed, but I don't know that for a fact. Notice that all the fixtures and cases we can see here are new.

Like Acme Style says, the store is very spacious for its size. The grand aisle is very oversized compared to the rest of the store.

I believe Boar's Head is a new addition here.

Meats line the back wall. As we can see, the store is extremely well-maintained.

ACME seems more inclined than most large supermarket chains to maintain these very small locations, which make up a pretty significant chunk of their store base.

Six aisles other than the grand aisle. As we can see, there's quite a selection even in the small space.

Aisle 4 a little off-center, but still looking good. We can also see the yellow wall with Quality Built-style paint on the back.

Dairy takes up a small alcove in the front left corner of the store.

And moving into frozen foods on the front wall...

Behind the freezer cases on the right side wall we can see the windows which face out into the parking lot.

Tiny (but nicely upgraded) bakery department in the front corner of the store! The front entrance/exit runs behind this department.

Also a very tiny customer service counter next to the bakery before moving on to the registers along the side wall. Soda and water line that wall beyond the registers.

We can see here a very good idea of just how small the store is, and how its bones are quite old. We can also notice that the register lights have been replaced with the latest Quality Built markers (but the aisle markers have not). Make sure you check out Little Silver here, and then we're moving on to Red Bank tomorrow here on The Market Report!