TOUR: Stop & Shop - Kinnelon, NJ

Stop & Shop
Opened: 2015

Previous Tenants: Pathmark (1980s-2015)

Location: 25 Kinnelon Rd, Kinnelon, NJ

Photographed: December 2020

Quite an interesting store we have here in Kinnelon! This 56,000 square foot store opened in the 1980s as a Pathmark (and was originally closer to 40,000 square feet). It's set up, like some other Pathmarks, as an indoor mall and while many of these stores have been "de-malled" over time, this one remains as an indoor mall. Therefore, there are still entrances and exits to the mall in the front and back, with the supermarket oriented to the side. Stop & Shop moved here in 2015 as a replacement for the Butler store basically just across the highway, which is now demolished.

There is no sign for Stop & Shop here on the front of the mall, and the above photo is taken of the back wall. Stop & Shop's main entrance is towards the back, but the front end is mostly open to the mall.

The indoor mall is actually quite attractive and has clearly been maintained nicely.

We enter to the produce department towards this back part of the store, and as we are familiar with the Pathmark Super Center layout, there are grocery aisles to the left and right...

As we'll see, this store got only a quick refresh when Stop & Shop took over from Pathmark. The Pathmark was quite beautiful, but Stop & Shop naturally removed anything attractive about the Pathmark. That said, I'm sure the Stop & Shop is far better run than the Pathmark ever was.

Super low-end decor here, although it's pretty attractive. For comparison, here's Pequannock about five miles southeast on NJ-23.

As we can see, Kinnelon has none of the higher end touches that Pequannock does, and also note that the flooring is left over from Pathmark.

Scaled-down Wellness Center signage here on the left side of the produce department. Stop & Shop seems to do a good job of keeping food and non-food separate.

The meat department is here on the back wall, with deli and seafood down at the far corner. You get a really strong Pathmark feeling here in the back of the store.

Note that the Go Fresh, Go Local decor package (what this Pathmark had, and which we saw mostly intact in Garwood) eliminated Pathmark's signature lit shelving for this style of fixture. I think it's also possible that those lighting bars were simply removed from the top of the shelving but the shelving itself was not replaced.

And if you want to talk about a strong Pathmark feeling, check out aisles 15 and 16, frozen foods. I assume all of the cases and flooring are completely left over, but it's possible the freezers have been painted.

I don't think much, if any, of the fixtures here were replaced when Pathmark remodeled this place from Path to Savings to Go Fresh, Go Local. These cheese/deli cases are clearly from Path to Savings.

Deli and seafood on the back wall, with milk on the back wall just to the right.

I'll say again that this decor falls flat when it's set in front of the wall like this but not backlit. I'm not sure why, but when the letters are directly on the wall it looks better if they're not going to be lit. I think it has something to do with the fact that the letters are dark and they get fuzzy with the shadows behind them, making it very hard to read them.

Is it possible that some of these refrigerators are original to Pathmark's opening?

Bakery and then Nature's Promise departments on the front-end (in other words, the indoor mall runs behind this section).

I'm not sure whether Pathmark would've had this as a natural foods department (I assume it was, since the flooring matches what Pathmark used in other locations). Prior to the Go Fresh, Go Local remodel, this was probably either soda or bread.

My phone was not doing too well with the colors on these last pictures, and this was at the very end of my prior phone's life.

And today, we're also visiting a small store in downtown Butler as well as a former A&P right over into Butler. Now by the way, I am aware that these are not in the immediate Parsippany and Great Piece Meadows area as I promised at the top of the post, but we are just doing one brief detour day today before heading down into Boonton tomorrow for two stores on The Market Report and one on Grocery Archaeology!