ShopRite of Chatham
Owner: Robert Sumas / Village Super Market
Owner: Robert Sumas / Village Super Market
Opened: 1970
Previous Tenants: none
Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.
Location: 641 Shunpike Rd, Chatham, NJ
Photographed: August 2019
This store certainly wins the prize for most unusual exterior of a ShopRite! I believe it also wins the prize for smallest ShopRite, at just about 25,000 square feet. This quite attractive strip mall opened in 1970 with the Village ShopRite as the anchor on the eastern end. It's a two-level strip mall, and I assume the ShopRite probably has a basement in the back, though there are also stores on the lower level on the two sides.
Despite the store's small size, it's been nicely maintained. There's no competition in this immediate area, though there is both a Stop & Shop and a Whole Foods just over a mile away in downtown Madison. Those are our next two stops, but I'm getting ahead of myself here. The Chatham ShopRite was probably built with the same decor package as Watchung, and likely was remodeled around 2005 to the same decor package as Bernardsville. It was remodeled once again, probably in 2017 or 2018, to the same decor package we saw in Springfield.
There's a tiny (but apparently full service in-store) bakery on the right side wall immediately inside the entrance, which you can just barely see the edge of under the exit sign on the far right. Customer service is next to the entrance, which you can see the desk of to the right. Deli is up next on the right side wall, with seafood and meat on the back wall of the store. Dairy and frozen are at the far left of the store, with floral and pharmacy on the front wall.
I've always liked Village's bakeries, especially for bread products like these. As I mentioned at Stirling, however, the artisan-type loaf breads are over at the deli, which here is probably all of 10 feet away.
The decor package is effectively scaled down to the store's small size and low ceiling.
Produce is opposite on the left side of what might be considered the grand aisle.
Bread, sushi, and seafood are at the back of the grand aisle.
I will say that when the decor is scaled down like this, it does have the tendency to become busy, especially with this huge number of oysters in seafood.
And just around the corner is the beginning of the meat department. I don't believe there's a service butcher counter here, though. Meats line the rest of the back wall.
And here we can see that, although the decor and flooring have been updated, the fixtures are quite old.
But despite the store's size, the aisles are pleasantly wide, just extremely short.
And we see a very inventive way to blend the older tile flooring in the aisles with the newer wood-look flooring at the front and back...
Nonfoods in aisles 9 and 10.
Notice anything interesting about this decor and Village's decor packages in the past? The ShopRite name is present, but clearly secondary to the Village Super Market name and logo. That's likely because the name holds a lot of weight in the Essex/Morris County areas, given the brand's history there (and the fact that the name Village was used for about 20 years before the chain joined Wakefern in the 1950s).
Frozen in aisle 13.
Dairy begins on the back wall here and then continues down the last aisle. There's also some more frozen here in aisle 14.
Looking along the back wall towards the grand aisle. I love the flooring here!
And even in this tiny store, we get the full Milk Store signage!
Two more dairy cases on the front wall, and then we have a gluten free section in this alcove.
We then make a left to leave this front alcove, with the pharmacy sticking out from the front wall.
Then we make a right turn to pass in front of the pharmacy.
Yikes, watch your head on that hanging Wellness Center sign. Otherwise, this area is quite nicely designed.
Floral on the front end.
Remember what I said about the Village name being more prominent than the ShopRite name? Well, as you leave, you don't get a Thank You For Shopping ShopRite sign. You get a Thank You For Shopping Village Super Market sign, with no ShopRite logo in sight.
That wraps up our tour of this tiny ShopRite! (Obviously, we've seen smaller stores, but as I said, I believe this is the smallest ShopRite out there.) Up next, we're heading about a mile east into downtown Madison for tomorrow's two posts, right here on The Market Report!
Seems to be one of those areas that wants things to appear more "traditional" (like the exterior makes it appear to be a series of smaller buildings, much like an old fashioned Main Street would have had).
ReplyDeleteOur Chatham (in NY) has Price Chopper, and the store is a bit larger now but started out in an inherited Grand Union (which was only constructed in the 1990's) that was just about the same size as this store. Unfortunately at that time Shoprite wasn't in the acquiring mode (like they later did with a few A&P locations).
Might be one of those towns that requires all buildings to appear in one of a few architecture styles. Freehold is that way. Check out the pictures of their Walmart, it's crazy.
DeleteWow, that is a nice Walmart!
DeleteYes to all of the above! Thanks for your thoughts!
DeleteAhhh... another small, cozy Shoprite for our enjoyment! So much to love here. The exterior is fantastic. The interior has more of a gourmet market vibe than a ShopRite. Helped out a lot by the black grocery shelving, which I love. So much nicer than the cream colored shelving Saker uses in all of their stores. The hardwood floors are beautiful and the blending with the tile in the grocery aisles is really cool. Nice to see the pharmacy survived the bloodbath of closings earlier this year. (I could not be more shocked that Jersey City, Hoboken and North Bergen's pharmacy all shut down. 3 super high-volume stores.)
ReplyDeleteReally love all the stores you have been covering lately! I'm getting store tours that I would probably never get even if AcmeStyle was still up and running.
I love this store too! I do think that the worst of Saker is way better than the worst of Village, but the best of Village is really better than the best of Saker I think. The shelving and flooring are great too!
DeleteThanks! I have a lot of really cool stuff and I'm really glad that I'm getting to share it. I have lots of current and former ACMEs to share too, both updates to stores you visited and stores that you never were able to get to... so lots to look forward to for you, plus of course all the other stores!
Thanks so much for this great post, and also for maintaining such a terrific website. (I also want to give a shout out to Acme Style for all the work he put into his awesome website.)
ReplyDeleteThis ShopRite holds a special place in my heart, for it's one of only two supermarkets in which I was a regular customer. The other such supermarket is the former A&P Centennial Store on Washington Street in Morristown, which closed back in December 2013 and has been a Whole Foods Market since April 2015. Whole Foods did a terrific job in modernizing that store while still keeping its classic exterior facade. That store is a must visit for anybody in the area, as is the Chatham ShopRite.
Regarding this store, I can share with you the following interesting bits of information:
*This store's official opening date was April 15, 1970. The opening of this store and this entire shopping center (which has a very unique and appealing exterior facade) was predated by the opening of an A&P Centennial store across the street. That A&P--and its shopping center--opened in December 1969.
*There was a serious fire in the Chatham ShopRite during the early morning of October 16, 1970. While the damage to the store's exterior seemed minimal (based on a newspaper photo I saw), its interior needed to be completely rebuilt. On April 14, 1971, the Chatham ShopRite re-opened for business.
*This Shoprite was expanded from its original size. One of the original tenants in the Hickory Square Shopping Center was a shop called Bantam, which was (per a newspaper article in the Madison-Florham Park Eagle) "a variety-type junior department store." Bantam was a small chain of stores, and their Chatham location was right next to the ShopRite. Its Chatham store closed in May 1986, and ShopRite expanded into the former Bantam space. The expansion portion of the ShopRite is the space from the store's tiny bakery all the way through (approximately) where the produce section ends.
*I was not able to locate a specific date as to when the aforementioned Chatham ShopRite expansion occurred. But based on my childhood memories, it seemed to be completed by the end of the summer of 1987. I seem to recall the store getting a major renovation at this same time, to go along with the expansion. And (again) based on my childhood memories, I somehow recall that prior to the expansion, the store's grocery aisles were perpendicular to where they are now.
*The circa 1987 expansion and renovation of the ShopRite was likely the final nail in the Chatham A&P's coffin. Based upon memory, that store closed in 1991. That building's facade got an ugly renovation when Cost Cutters (later to become a Drug Fair) opened in 1995.
*There's obviously been other renovations since 1987 (for instance, the wooden flooring and the shelves in the grocery aisles were put in much more recently), but the 1987 expansion and renovation was the biggest change made to the store.
*The store's pharmacy unfortunately closed in early 2020. This shopping center does have a CVS (that has been in operation since 1974 and which has been expanded over the years), which was likely a factor in ShopRite's decision to close this store's pharmacy.
Before I conclude, I wanted to mention that many of the above dates were ascertained by going to newspapers.com. For those of you who have access to that website, you'll want to check out Page 21 of the April 23, 1970 edition of the Madison-Florham Park Eagle, which features pictures of how the Chatham ShopRite looked on opening day. (There's also additional information about the Hickory Square Shopping Center's opening in that day's edition of the Madison-Florham Park Eagle.)
One last thing is that I'm not quite sure if the Chatham ShopRite is the smallest ShopRite that I know, as the Millburn and Netcong locations are also quite small. (Though sadly, I read that there are plans to replace the classic Netcong ShopRite.)
--A&P Fan
Thank you for all of your details and contributions! I have a few thoughts on what you've said:
Delete- 1987 sounds about right for the renovation/remodel. I assume at that point the store would've looked a lot like East Orange does today. https://www.marketreportblog.com/2021/03/tour-shoprite-east-orange-nj.html
- It also sounds logical that the aisles originally ran the opposite way, perpendicular to the current setup. Village sometimes still does that, with the aisles perpendicular to the checkouts.
- Interesting that the pharmacy closed. It wasn't part of the big closure of the 60+ pharmacies closed back in early 2021, which is a little unusual. Village didn't close any pharmacies in that round, but oh boy Inserra really must've been suffering (19 pharmacies closed of the 62, and if I'm not mistaken, Inserra no longer has ANY pharmacies in their stores).
- Morristown A&P/Whole Foods is beautiful! Come back in a few days for that one.
- Chatham is 25,000 square feet, Millburn is 32,000 square feet, and Netcong is 29,000. So unless there's an even smaller one out there... which I don't think there is... Chatham takes the prize.
Thanks again and glad to have you stopping by!
Thanks so much for your response.
DeleteWhile I wasn't sure if the Millburn ShopRite was bigger than Chatham, I never would have guessed that Netcong was bigger.
Also, were it not for great internet resources such as your website, I never would have known that a decent number of ShopRites were in operation before Chatham opened. Stores such as Stirling and Livingston don't appear nearly as old as they are due to all the renovations and expansions they had over the years.
One final note is that, the more I think about it, Chatham does not have the most unusual exterior of any ShopRite. IMO, that distinction would have to go to the Oakland store, just by virtue of the fact that the ShopRite name or logo doesn't appear on that store's exterior!
I go by the name of "Max" on the Groceteria message board, and I recently started a new thread that you might be interested in, titled "Historical Information About ShopRite Locations (Past & Present)". In the second post of the thread, I shared numerous links to articles and photographs of the Chatham ShopRite from when it was brand new. These links lead to "clippings" I made while in Newspapers.com. (According to the Groceteria Webmaster, these links only work for people who are members of Newspapers.com. However, I am able to access a "free preview" of these clippings when I am logged out of Newspapers.com. Hopefully, you will be able to see these clippings as well, because even the free previews of what I can see are quite good.)
ReplyDeleteMy first post in the "Historical Information About ShopRite Locations (Past & Present)" thread was about the Netcong store, although I did not share anything new that I have not already said on your blog. When I profile another ShopRite supermarket, I will leave a comment on your blog (to alert you and others of interesting new content that I shared).
Thanks for sharing the info -- and looking forward to hearing what else you come up with!
Delete