TOUR: Stop & Shop - Franklin/Somerset, NJ

Stop & Shop
Opened: late 2000s

Previous Tenants: none

Location: 1221 NJ-27, Somerset, NJ

Photographed: July 2020

We saw one New Brunswick store at the far south end of the city yesterday, but as we pass into the downtown part of New Brunswick we're taking a brief detour to the west along the border of Somerset and New Brunswick. This side of NJ-27 is in Somerset, while the other side of the street is New Brunswick. This 54,000 square foot Stop & Shop was built in the late 2000s and doesn't appear to be a replacement for any other store. 

It's interesting to me that it's not all that old a store, since it seems to be treated a little bit more like an older store. The decor has been painted white, a change from the original yellow, which brightens up the store but is visually atrocious. The grand aisle consists of produce on the left side with deli and bakery along the right wall and meat and seafood on the back wall.

I'm not convinced this store is doing all that well, as we see a few signs of decline around the store. The deli and prepared foods section has been cut back pretty significantly, although it's hard to know for sure whether that's sales volume or due to the coronavirus. As we'll see, the pharmacy has also been removed.

The bakery, though, is looking pretty good. You can see that the white walls-yellow decor combination is somehow just as bad as the yellow walls-yellow decor combination... although anyone who reads this blog knows I dislike most Stop & Shop decor packages.

If the store isn't all that old, I have to wonder whether some of these cases were brought in from another store that had closed or was renovated. Otherwise I guess they're just old-looking.

As much as I can complain about the painting of the walls, I must say it was a good decision. The all-yellow stores are so much dingier than the ones that have been painted white.

Meat and cold cuts extending along the back wall. As we can see, the store is plenty spacious but doesn't seem to be particularly high-volume.

Heading in to the grocery aisles, we find the first aisle has a wall of savings, a feature I've been noticing in most Stop & Shops I've been visiting.

That cart also looks to be actually older than the store.

Like so many of these gigantic Stop & Shops (the store models have recently shrunk, by the way -- see Mahopac), this store has a large selection of several aisles of nonfoods items.

Dairy takes up part of the back wall, and frozen takes up the last two aisles. The store is wide enough that the full meat and dairy selections fit on the back wall.

The first of two frozen aisles.

Notice that not all of the back wall had been painted white. Makes for a very odd appearance.

Former pharmacy department in the front corner. The health and beauty aisles are facing, where many stores have the Nature's Promise department. I don't believe this store has a designated natural foods section, but I also don't believe it ever did -- in other words, this section has always been HABA and was not changed over.

And floral is, interestingly enough, an island in the grocery aisles rather than a department on a perimeter wall.

A look at the front-end back towards the grand aisle. Now as I mentioned, we'll be heading north along NJ-27 which is the border between Somerset and New Brunswick, so tomorrow we'll be checking out a store on the other side of the street about a mile up in New Brunswick. Stay tuned!