TOUR: Kings Food Markets - Warren, NJ

Kings Food Markets

Opened: ?? - January 2021

Previous Tenants: unknown

Location: 64 Mountain Blvd, Warren, NJ

Photographed: July 2020, January 2021, and July 2021

It's time for our history lesson here. In August of 2020, KB US Holdings, the parent company of Kings and Balducci's, declared bankruptcy. An investment firm from New York City submitted a bid, but ultimately lost to Malvern, PA-based ACME Markets which in October 2020 announced they would purchase 27 locations of the bankrupt chains for $96.4 million. This excluded six Kings and two Balducci's. This Warren location was one of the stores not purchased by ACME, likely because there's an ACME directly across the street. I visited the store about a month before Kings declared bankruptcy, in July of 2020, and then again on January 19, 2021. The store closed for good the following day, January 20, 2021. I returned to see the store post-closure in July of 2021, and those pictures are at the very end.

But let's start with seeing the store when it was fully functional, back in the summer of 2020! We enter to the Market Square, with cheese in an island on the left side, and bakery/deli along the right side wall.

Looking towards the back wall of the grand aisle. The produce department is at the back of the grand aisle. In retrospect, it actually makes sense this store wasn't purchased (and remains vacant) -- looking back on the pictures now, it's really obvious the space was outdated despite having been remodeled not too long ago.

At about 17,000 square feet, this store is just about half the size of the ACME across the street. Here we see bakery and deli on the right side of the grand aisle. It's hard to tell, but it doesn't look like there was an in-store bakery here. Notice how few customers there were at the time of my summer visit, when the store was still functional.

The produce department, however, in the far back corner of the store, was looking really good. I have always been a little wary of buying produce at Kings, though, because the turnover seems so low. That's something ACME has improved drastically on since their acquisition of the A&P stores.

Looking back out into the rest of the grand aisle from the produce department. Seafood is at the back of the grand aisle...

...and meats continue along the rest of the back wall.

Not a whole lot to see in the grocery aisles, though I must say that I like the flooring (even though it's very faint). We can tell, though, that the bones of the store are old and the remodels it's received have been only cosmetic.

That's all we have for the center store, with frozen foods on one side of aisle 7 and one side of aisle 8, then dairy on the outside of aisle 8.

All the cases had been updated, however. ACME actually bought the fixtures from several of the closed Kings and Balducci's stores, and they were sent to other stores.

Floral in the front corner, with customer service opposite near the entrance...

Now, that wraps up my summer 2020 tour. I returned in January, unknowingly visiting the store about 30 hours before it closed for good the following day.

The store remains vacant so far, likely because Warren is a small town and the ACME is so close.

A little fun with my wide-angle lens because I can.

The Bedminster store, which is about eight miles to the northwest, has also been photographed and will be coming to the blog in the coming weeks, once we finish Plainfield. Remember that the store closing was handled by KB US, not ACME/Albertsons (which took over the other stores about four days after this store closed), so the signs didn't direct people to the ACME across the street since they weren't the same company just yet.

As we'll see, the store really was cleaned out by the time I got to visit.

All of the remaining perishables had been consolidated into the cheese case at the front of the grand aisle. The rest was just empty...

Seems like some of the fixtures in produce had already been removed, possibly sent to other locations or just brought to the backrooms.

Everything in the back of the store had been cleared out entirely as the little bits and pieces of stock still left on the shelves were brought forward.

There was almost nothing worth buying despite the 50% off sales -- in fact, I had grabbed some unpriced 50% off canned soups at Bernardsville, which I visited earlier that day, only to find out that Kings' 50% off was still higher than the weekly sale at ACME the following week. Oof.

Meat and seafood seemed to have been long gone from the store...

One of the biggest problems with Kings' facilities, age aside, becomes incredibly apparent when all the stock is removed: the appearance is deadly boring. Everything is the same bland beige color.

Nothing but odds and ends left on the shelves. There were a few people wandering around the store, but none of them were really buying anything because there wasn't really anything left worth buying.

Not sure if these are all in order, but oh well.

Some pet products left at the far end of the store. Looks like they left the refrigerator and freezer cases on, despite most of them being empty.

Unfortunately, not much new around here.

These appear to be just stacks of cardboard boxes, presumably used for packing up the unsold merchandise for shipment to another location or to a discount retailer.

Frozen and dairy totally cleaned out.

Another look across the back wall from the frozen/dairy side back towards the grand aisle.

Moving into the front-end from the front left corner of the store. I think this corner would've been bread and packaged baked goods, with floral just around the corner to the right.

The front end was almost completely still intact, except for the merchandise that would've been displayed at the registers.

And a look at customer service and the other side of the front end. And finally for the post-closure photos...

As we can see, it's a very attractive strip mall.

Let's see what we can see up at the windows...

Come share our love of food! Not to be confused, of course, with Come Share Our Values, Waldbaum's slogan. (And apparently America's Food Basket sometimes, too, since Waldbaum's no longer holds the trademark on it.)

Notice that the Kings logo had been scraped off the entrance. I'm not sure why, since as we'll see, there's plenty of brand remnants elsewhere.

So let's peek into the entrance...

Not honestly a whole lot to see here, although we can tell that most of the fixtures and all of the decor are still fully intact.

Not entirely sure why, but the two windows on either side of the entrance and exit doors were boarded up. The rest are still open. The store closing posters are still in the windows six months later, but let's see what we can see inside.

Practically everything is still there. The lease on this store was rejected, so this is all now the landlord's responsibility. I assume they have left all the fixtures intact instead of attempting to sell them individually to make it more appealing for another grocer to move in quickly.

Crazy how good these pictures are through the front windows.

Looks like this corner was nonfoods or maybe an extension of the floral department, I can't remember what was here. Greeting card racks are visible on the wall.

Just out of frame to the left here is a door to a manager's office. The door was left open but I couldn't really get a good look inside from this window. But as luck would have it, the blinds on the large windows in the office were left open!

How about that?!

What's that left on the desk? A pack of staples, an old receipt... and a floor plan of the store!

Pretty straightforward layout, as we see here. Still a cool find! As I mentioned, I found it strange that they were so meticulous scraping the Kings decal off the front entrance when the monument signs out on the street still have the Kings logo prominently displayed...

That wraps up our tour of this now-closed Kings, but you can be sure I'll head back if another store takes over! Make sure to see today's other tour of the ACME here. And speaking of ACME, guess what tomorrow's store tour is! That'll be right here on The Market Report.