TOUR: Kings Food Markets - Chatham, NJ

Kings Food Markets

Opened: 1970s

Previous Tenants: none; Safeway > Finast > Good Deal previously on this property

Location: 393 Main St, Chatham, NJ

Photographed: December 2019, November 2020, and July 2021

Ahhh, what a beautiful supermarket exterior. I mean, sure, sometimes we see supermarkets with unappealing rear entrances and exits. But this one doesn't look great all around. Unlike most supermarkets, this one is set up so that it's right up at the street with the parking in the rear. This 19,000 square foot store was constructed by Kings in the 1970s to replace an older store they had on the same property, in what was previously a Safeway that became a Finast and later a Good Deal, that burned down.

Not much to see out on the street side, either. The layout of this store thoroughly confuses me, with the front-end running along the left side wall of the store; aisles run from side to side with produce in the back and deli/bakery in the front. Now typically you'd set it up that way so that you can have two sets of entrances and exits -- one in the back for the parking lot, and one in the front for pedestrians. This store has only one entrance and one exit, in the back at the parking lot.

The store is just about a block away from a former ACME, which we're seeing today on Grocery Archaeology. Now once we get inside, the store is not nearly as weird as it is on the outside. I'll just make one more complaint, though, and it's a big one...

Here's the produce aisle which runs along the back wall of the store. Acme Style made a stop in this store back in 2012, soon before its Where Inspiration Strikes remodel. This is something I've felt for a long time but wasn't able to really express without the pictures to go along with it. Check out how the produce aisle looked prior to the latest remodel -- without a doubt, the older decor package was way better. This one is bland and boring, and has no personality of any kind. All the visual interest of the old one -- the colorful walls, the wooden structures on the ceiling, the big food pictures -- is completely gone in this newer, and much, much cheaper, decor package. I wasn't aware that even the flooring seems to be left over from that past decor package.

Floral is on the front end opposite produce, with cheese in an island in the produce department.

It looks like the cheese and floral departments may have been added in the Where Inspiration Strikes remodel, though. Like many other Kings stores, and most of the ones we've been seeing lately, I photographed this store in November of 2020, after Kings declared bankruptcy in August 2020, then accepted a bid from ACME to purchase 19 of the 25 stores in October 2020. The sale closed on January 23, 2021. I know I'm repeating myself, so I'm sorry to those who have had to read the same darn thing over and over on every Kings post.

Meats line the left wall of the store, which functions as the back interior wall.

Wondering why we saw Madison between the ShopRite in Chatham and this Kings in Chatham? That's because there are actually two Chathams. The ShopRite is in the Township of Chatham, which is larger and west of the Borough of Chatham, which forms the main downtown area including this store and the former ACME next door. Madison is kind of sandwiched in between the two to the north. The township and the borough are two separate, distinct municipalities. There are other examples of arrangements like this, such as the Borough of Chester, which is bounded on all four sides by the Township of Chester.

Now I'm having trouble placing the layout exactly in my mind, but it seems that there are seven aisles total, not counting produce. Aisle five has dairy on one side, aisle six has dairy on one side and frozen on the other, and aisle seven has frozen on both sides.

These cases were all replaced in the Where Inspiration Strikes remodel, which probably took place around 2014.

And in this back corner is the seafood counter, which once again was looking much better before the remodel...

Note the somewhat sparse seafood display (in this picture taken about two months before ACME took over). I've noticed that since the ACME acquisition, the stores seem to be doing a better job of stocking the service counters.

Deli and bakery in the front corner. Or whatever corner we're actually in; I suppose the wall to our left is the front wall facing Main Street and the wall straight ahead is the side wall where the front-end is.

Interesting that this store gets only "Baked Goods". Many have the longer "Patisserie & Artisan Breads", which may not have fit on this store's smaller wall space.

Customer service and front end, which again runs along the left side wall of the store. Now for a few things post-ACME acquisition. The changes -- if they happened at all -- happened painfully slowly at most of the Kings locations, a good six months after ACME officially took over the stores. In July, though, ACME reset all the POS systems at the stores to match the existing Albertsons programs; they also added self-checkouts in most (all?) stores. The price tags around the stores were switched over to the Albertsons/ACME type, and the sale signs were changed over to the same kind used in Andronico's on the west coast. Part of that change, however, was not eliminating the Kings brand in favor of Signature / O Organics brands. The Albertsons brands have been put on the shelves alongside the existing Kings brands.

Andronico's-type price signage here in produce.

This was not the first store to get the price signs switched and the POS/self-checkout upgrade, but it was the first I visited. I'm unsure what's going on in the Bergen County stores, but this was the first in the Essex-Morris-Union area to get the switch over. I believe Hoboken was the first to actually get the change.

Note that the basic price tags are identical to ACME's now, but the sale tags are not (ACME's are red and yellow, and much more value-focused. These are higher end); also notice that the product being shown here is a Kings branded item.

And a look at the newly-installed self checkouts in place of one of the service registers. I assume due to the store's relatively small size, there were only three self checkouts installed and no podium for the attendant. I guess there's not much for them to do since this doesn't seem to be a particularly high volume store. Anyway, that wraps up our look at the Chatham Kings, and also our visit to the Great Swamp area! (Check out the former ACME here if you didn't get to.) Tomorrow we'll be jumping into our next group, in the Morristown area, so come back to check out what'll be coming soon!