TOUR: ShopRite - Hillsborough, NJ

ShopRite of Hillsborough

Owner: Robert Sumas / Village Super Market

Opened: ca. 1985

Previous Tenants: none

Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.

Location: 601 US-206, Hillsborough, NJ

Photographed: July 2020

The ShopRite of Hillsborough, NJ is the southernmost northern New Jersey Village Super Market-owned ShopRite. Wow, that's a really bad sentence, let's try that again. So Village Super Market, which owns a lot of ShopRites in northern New Jersey, also has some in the southernmost part of the state, but there's a big gap between Hillsborough, the farthest-south in the northern NJ group, and those along US-30 which connects Atlantic City to Philadelphia, more or less. Those include Absecon, Hammonton, Galloway, and a few others. Those are a good 65 miles south of Hillsborough, and the space is filled mostly by Saker and Perlmutter ShopRites on the east coast of the state, and Ravitz, Brown, and Saker again (and maybe others?) on the western side. Does that make any sense? I hope so...

While I've read from multiple sources that this store opened in the early 90s, it was actually opened between 1984 and 1987, making it more similar to East Orange (opened in 1987, 56k square feet) in size and layout than the mid-90s Essex Green and Elizabeth (70k square feet). Hillsborough, coming in at just over 52,000 square feet, does however resemble Essex Green and Elizabeth in that it's recently been renovated to the same latest decor package.

This ShopRite is noticeably smaller, older, and more cramped than the nearby Weis (former Pathmark), but the latest remodel really helped with that.

Like most Village stores, we enter to the grand aisle with bakery in the front right corner, then deli and seafood lining the right side wall. The grand aisle is looking great with its new flooring and decor, but there's a noticeable difference between this newly-renovated store and the newer and renovated stores like Essex Green.

And unfortunately, with low ceilings come scaled-down decor. (Compare this to Essex Green, and you'll see how much they had to cut from the decor.)

Prepared foods and deli are up next along the right-side wall...

I don't seem to have taken a picture of the service deli counter, which is up next along this side wall. By the way, this store previously had the same Frankenstein decor package(s) as Millburn. It confuses me why Village would have been using that older (late 70s/early 80s) decor package in a store in the mid- to late-80s when there was a newer decor package (what's in East Orange) right behind it.

Seafood in the back corner with a gluten free department in between that and produce. That's a little unusual, since Village doesn't typically separate out the natural or gluten free products. I assume they do here because the grand aisle is too wide and they needed to do something with the space.

The only fault in this decor is that "produce" and "market" are so far apart as to be completely unrelated. Produce lines the first grocery aisle, while Market is on the back wall. You can see how disconnected they are in the first overview of the grand aisle.

All of the produce fixtures were replaced, which is interesting since I'm not entirely sure what was wrong with the old ones. I do like that all of the new fixtures are multi-tiered, meaning maximum display space.

Meats and "craft butcher" (sadly there's no service butcher counter here, just a small service window) on the back wall. But this is clearly an older, renovated store instead of a relatively new store -- closer to Springfield than any of the others, even East Orange because of this store's weird shape and multiple corners.

Older aisle sign here in the second aisle, looking up to Blooms and Guest Services on the front wall. The flooring and fixtures were not replaced in the remodel -- it looks like Village is really only remodeling the perimeters in their latest efforts. I suspect that's a tactic to limit the amount of work that has to be done to maximize the number of stores they're remodeling.

Make Tonight Family Meal Night, with updated aisle markers on the perimeter (but older flooring and un-replaced fixtures).

Nonfoods here in aisle 13. Again, these aisle signs are left from the prior decor package.

Zig-zaggy dairy corners, again feeling like the store was expanded (was it?) rather than being built this way...

Some pretty solid evidence of an expansion here: the back wall comes in at aisle 16, and frozen takes up aisles 14 and 15. That would leave 16 for bread and dairy, a standard Village layout -- it's pretty unusual for there to be five more aisles after frozen foods in a Village store.

Again, this flooring seems a bit older than what Village was mostly putting in by the late 80s, more closely resembling the late 70s/early 80s flooring. But it's been nicely refinished.

Dairy lines the outside of the last aisle, with a small additional section on the front wall. Dietitian and pharmacy are next on the front wall...

And one more idiosyncrasy on the front end... notice that the registers are numbered with the highest number being closest to the entrance and the lowest, the closest to this end (the pharmacy). This is the only Village store I've ever been in with the checkouts going from high to low instead of low to high across the front end from the entrance to the pharmacy.

I must say, as much as this new decor package is very attractive, I miss the lime-green bold front end with the historical Village Super Market pictures on the wall! See Union. Honestly, I don't know for sure that this decor package is actually an improvement over Union's slightly older (2014 vs. 2019) decor package... but I don't know for sure that it's not, either. Both are really nice. Anyway, don't forget to check out our second store tour just across the street over on The Independent Edition, and our final Hillsborough store is coming tomorrow also over on The Independent Edition!