TOUR: H Mart - Edison, NJ

H Mart
President: Stacey Kwan

Opened: ca. 2009

Previous Tenants: W.T. Grant > National Wholesale Liquidators

Location: 1761 Lincoln Hwy, Edison, NJ

Photographed: July 2020

Our next stop in Edison is the H Mart! The sprawling, 75,000 square foot store is clearly the top-tier Asian supermarket in Edison (although we've previously seen Lotte Plaza, Kam Man, and 99 Ranch) -- as H Mart tends to be the nicest and largest Asian supermarket in the markets they're in. By the way, there was previously an ACME at the other end of this mall until 1992, but the extensive facade renovations done around 2009 when H Mart moved in disguise the former supermarket. See more here. Inside, the approximately 12-year-old supermarket is absolutely gorgeous...

A food court takes up the front left corner of the store, with produce in the back left corner. Seafood, refrigerated goods, and meat take up the back wall in that order from left to right. Frozen foods line the second-to-last aisle with nonfoods and housewares in the last aisle. The aisles are split in half from front to back because the store is so large, with checkouts and prepared foods on the front wall. In front of checkouts is a row of outside businesses.

The food court, due to coronavirus restrictions, had been converted to takeout-only at the time of my visit.

H Mart designs its stores in-house now, but at the time of this store's opening, they hired DY Design to develop the decor package. We'll see some specific DY features a little later.

The produce department is sprawling. Perishables overall have to take up about 1/3 of the gigantic location.

And a huge seafood department -- complete with live fish tanks, and a service counter that lines the back wall and continues into an island in the middle of the department -- takes up the back of the grand aisle.

The pictures above the department look vaguely like the A&P Fresh 2.0 decor, although the grid pattern is more regular and the panel is not curved. I believe that A&P designed its store interiors in-house, although it's possible DY Design also played a role in that decor package. More likely, though, they're just similar decor installed at approximately the same time.

Refrigerated foods line the rest of the back wall.

And moving into the grocery aisles, we see that they show a little wear and tear the rest of the store doesn't show at all.

Because of the store's enormous size, the aisles are split in half from front to back with a dividing aisle.

Prepared foods (for take-out) are at the front of the first few grocery aisles. The checkouts are to the left in the above picture.

And the front-end just to the left...

Notice how similar in design this front-end is to the City Supermarket in Newark. Check out the front-end here. Notice the two-tone tile flooring in the aisles is also the same, but different colors. And for the record, I don't know how I caught that City Supermarket on a day when it was so empty, every time I've been back it's been very busy. It's not far from where I live and I like their selection a lot.

Frozen foods down the middle of the store. It's possible these cases have been updated since the store opened.

Moving back to the back wall of the store. Here we're looking towards produce and seafood on the left side of the store. Notice the flooring is the same pattern as City's.

Meat takes up the back right corner of the store, with nonfoods and housewares lining the last aisle.

The center aisle extends down to the last aisle here.

And seeing the front-end again, from the other side...

As you exit the store, you pass through a row of storefronts with other vendors along the exit hallway.

And the last business at the exit is Tous Les Jours, a bakery/cafe chain that seems to have a contract with H Mart to operate outposts in many of their locations. For that reason, H Marts don't really have bakery departments.

And that's about all for this store! This is a huge store with a lot to offer, and today we're also going to the other end of the spectrum -- a much, much smaller greengrocer store that really only sells produce. That's on The Independent Edition, and up next, a small Indian market just over into Piscataway, also on The Independent Edition!