TOUR: ShopRite - Perth Amboy, NJ

ShopRite of Perth Amboy
Owner: Irv Glass / Glass Gardens

Opened: unknown

Previous Tenants: unknown, possibly Finast

Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.

Location: 365 Convery Blvd, Perth Amboy, NJ

Photographed: June 2020

The largest supermarket in Perth Amboy (which is a peninsula) is this 58,000 square foot ShopRite. It's pretty distinct from aerial views that this is a combination of two spaces, either formerly two different stores or an expansion doubling the store's size. While I don't know what occupied this space prior to ShopRite, I notice significant similarities to Carteret (imagine that it's a mirror image), which was previously a Finast.

In 2012, Hurricane Sandy flooded this store and destroyed most of it, requiring a total interior and exterior renovation (see the "before" picture here). The store was getting another light renovation at the time of my summer 2020 visit, which we'll see almost finished in this tour. We enter to an expansion at the right side with produce, then bakery in the back. Deli, seafood, and meat line the back wall with dairy and frozen at the far end.

Notice the curved sign at the top of the produce aisle left over from the previous decor package! The produce department is rather small, given the overall size of the store. This section is less deep than the rest of the store, making it seem even smaller.

A very small floral department (notice that it's not a service counter here, as most larger ShopRites have) and pharmacy on the front wall.

Bakery department is next along the back wall. While we see new decor, fixtures, and flooring, the bones are left over from the previous decor package. Especially the curves we see in the ceiling here...

The flooring has been replaced in the produce aisle, in the bakery department, and in the first few aisles.

Meanwhile, the flooring and fixtures in the deli department are left over from the past (in fact, those deli cases look very old), but the new decor is going in. The deli sign had not been fully installed yet.

We can see a lot of space where decor will be going up here on the back wall. All these areas will look a lot less empty once that is finished.

Moving into the main grocery aisles, we see aisle markers left over from the previous decor package and flooring and shelving from well before that.

Three things of note here in seafood. First of all, obviously the department sign hasn't gone up yet. Second, though, the curved wooden panel is almost definitely left over from the previous remodel (just with new wallpaper on it). And third, the seafood department is arranged so that coffin freezer cases are positioned under ice display cases. Zoom in on those displays -- for a nearly 60,000 square foot store, that's actually a tiny seafood selection. I'm frequently surprised by how small some large supermarkets' seafood selections are.

Moving into the meat department, which takes up about 1/3 of the back wall, we see the decor fully installed. While frozen cases line the back wall, most of the fresh meat selection is in islands in the middle of the back aisle.

Hard to tell whether this is a former butcher counter that's now just turkey, or whether it's a butcher counter coming in and just hasn't been set up yet. Either way, this section either will be or was a service butcher.

This section of the store looks pretty good despite the renovation not being finished yet. I hope these cases are either replaced or painted. But as we get into frozen and dairy, the store is in really rough shape. It doesn't really come across too much in these pictures, but it's very apparent in person. Hopefully the renovation helped with that. And, uh, I hope they renovated the bathrooms. And gave 'em a good old-fashioned scrubbing.

Frozen foods, in a mixture of old and new cases, in aisles 22 and 23...

The store has 24 aisles (which sounds like a lot, but they're relatively short). 24 is dairy and cold cuts.

I have to wonder a little about this store. From everything I was aware of, Glass Gardens stores are crazy high volume. Linden is packed seven days a week all day long (and Glass Gardens stores are 24 hours). But the indications here point to a bit of a struggling store -- very simple remodels, very old fixtures and flooring, a general dirtiness and dinginess, just a general lack of investment. For comparison, both Linden and Perth Amboy got remodels in preparation for SuperFresh locations opening around a mile away. But Linden's remodel was much more extensive than Perth Amboy's. Is it simply that Glass felt less threatened by a 30,000 square foot store in Hopelawn than a 60,000+ square foot store in Linden? Is the $10,000 MHI difference between Linden and Perth Amboy really that significant? Is this store struggling, perhaps relative to the other Glass Gardens stores -- as in, still profitable but not as much as the others? Is it simply that this store was renovated in 2012 while Linden hadn't been redone since the 90s, meaning it needed less work?

Additional frozen foods in the front corner. The wall we see straight ahead is the front wall of the store.

The front-end still has its color scheme left over from the 2012 decor, but any actual signage that might have been here has been removed. Some parts of the front end look much older...

...such as the flowers and designs painted on the sloped ceiling over the front end. The checkout lane markers are probably left from the renovation before the 2012 one, although I'm not sure on that. From here on, we'll be finishing up Perth Amboy, traveling east out to the end of the peninsula. Our next stop will be about a quarter of a mile to the southeast. Come back tomorrow to check it out!