TOUR: Fine Fare Supermarkets - Plainfield, NJ

Fine Fare Supermarkets

Owner: unknown

Opened: ca. 2013

Previous Tenants: Safeway > Finast > Foodtown > Drug Fair

Cooperative: Retail Grocers Group

Location: 1479 South Ave, Plainfield, NJ

Photographed: July 2018 and July 2020

We are outside of downtown here in Plainfield for our last Plainfield store! The 15,000 square foot store is about half of an arched-roof Safeway, later Finast and Foodtown, which was then subdivided into a video store and a Drug Fair, each taking half of the store. (The store runs along South Avenue, with a parking lot at either end, so it's natural that it would just be split down the middle.) The video store became a beauty supply store, and Drug Fair closed in 2007. In 2010, a CTown Supermarket opened up shop in the former Drug Fair space, which around 2013 was switched over to Fine Fare.

This Fine Fare, which strikes me as a very well-run supermarket, is likely a key reason that the Fig Tree Market (and its assorted predecessors) up the street failed. That's our other post for the day, so make sure you check it out!

Here's a bad drive-by photo from 2018 of the right side of the former Safeway, now the beauty supply store, with the monument sign advertising both that store and the Fine Fare. The supermarket today takes up the left side of the building...

In July 2018, the store had a temporary Fine Fare banner on the side, where the parking lot is, since the main logo sign seen above is nearly invisible from both directions, actually. It was gone by my July 2020 visit...

Fine Fare, as I assume Safeway was, is oriented with the front-end facing South Avenue. The first aisle therefore runs along this side wall visible here, with deli and baked goods on the left side and produce facing. Meat and butcher line the back wall, and there was previously a seafood counter in the back right corner. Eight aisles in total here, with frozen on one side of aisle 7 and the inside of aisle 8, and dairy on the outside of aisle 8.

As we can see, there's a lot to offer in this small space! Here's the grand aisle, which is absolutely packed with merchandise. Not much produce up here in the front, but don't worry, we'll get there. Deli and baked goods are in the front part on the left. And by the way, this is the same decor that CTown opened with, but the logos have been changed out. (I assume, although I could be wrong, that the CTown was the same owners as Fine Fare today.)

Deli and produce in the first/grand aisle. I don't seem to have a good picture of it, but generally fruit is on the right side of the produce aisle and vegetables are on the left, seen here...

Very attractive decor here for sure. That's in contrast to Los Amigos' other store in North Plainfield, which has nearly none.

Meat and service butcher on the back wall of the store. You can see the store isn't that large, but it's not very small either.

One thing you'll definitely notice if you shop here, though, is how beautifully stocked and clean it is. That flooring is looking pretty awesome for 11 years old!

Looking towards the back of the store with packaged meat on the back wall.

To take a minute to comment on selection, I find Fine Fare very interesting. They're sometimes considered to be a higher-priced store than their equivalents like CTown or Key Food, which may be true -- although I think generally Fine Fare's prices are fine and their sales can be excellent. But I think also worth considering is that Fine Fare uses the Parade storebrand from The Federated Group. Parade is a decent storebrand, but its product line is extremely limited, meaning that for most products in the store, you're stuck with the name brands and fewer generic alternatives. The Krasdale line is wider, which is sold at CTown, and the Urban Meadow line at Key Food is the most extensive of them all.

Nonfoods in aisle 6.

Butcher Shoppe, sadly missing the first half of its sign, takes up quite a bit of space on the back wall. Just to the right of the service butcher is a closed seafood department, now displaying sale items:

You wouldn't even notice that this department had been removed if the sign were taken down, but it looks like it's been gone for a while now.

There's an overview of the back wall from the right side of the store.

Frozen foods on one side of aisle 7, and I appreciate that the frozen department gets some signage here! Pretty good, too -- "Fast feasts."

I think it's pretty likely the fixtures here were brought in secondhand from somewhere else when the store opened in 2010. They look a little older.

Nice looking front-end! I particularly like the rounded customer service counter at the other end and the rounded floor pattern matching it. That's all for today, and make sure to check out Fig Tree here. Tomorrow, we're heading up to Scotch Plains for a look at a store over on The Independent Edition!