Update: ACME Markets - Hoboken & Midland Park, NJ

Hoboken

Welcome back to Hoboken! Lots to see going on here. We last saw an update, courtesy of the Acme Style blogger, at the beginning of last month. Well, I got to visit myself at the end of November and was very pleased to see serious work being done at this very small (24,000 square foot) store. The biggest change was, of course, was the re-addition of the liquor store...

Which was being advertised with this large sign out on Clinton Ave. Let's head in and see what's been going on inside the supermarket...

Floral has been moved into the former customer service counter, and customer service was moved across to the other side of the front end. As we see, the flooring had been ripped up around the store, but only the liquor store had gotten new flooring at the time of my visit.

Here's the liquor register and the entrance to the liquor department.

Seems like there was a fair amount of stocking going on, although I do think the department was fully set up when I visited. This area is the left-side wall of the store.

Looking very good, with new lit shelving and flooring. The ceiling still needs help.

I think there are four short aisles, which run parallel to the front wall, in this section.

A look at produce opposite the liquor department. Acme Style reports that the produce department is actually being expanded slightly into the backroom space, widening the first aisle, which is currently extremely narrow...

Looking up towards the front of the store.

Seafood and meat service are in the back corner of the first aisle. I believe, although I'm not 100% certain, that these cases were brought in secondhand from one of the closed Kings or Balducci's stores. More on that later...

Front-end near the entrance, with floral to the left. Here's the first time we can clearly see that Quality Built is going strong around the store...

Flooring had been taken up around the whole store, as we see here in the back aisle. Looks like the lighting was replaced throughout the store, too. Acme Style reports (as linked above) that the flooring has been re-installed in the back here.

Even the aisles' flooring was replaced!

The store is looking really bright compared to how it previously was. Nice and clean, too, even though it's in the middle of construction.

Grocery shelving has not been replaced, though. Doesn't look like too many other fixtures around the store had been replaced.

Such as these freezer cases. But notice that the lighting is new, and very nice and bright.

Dairy in the last aisle. Doors have been added to the cases to the left, and an additional row of cases was installed at the back of the facing side of the aisle. Anything to note about them? Of course...

Check out those "Milk - Compare & Save" decals. Those are certainly from Kings/Balducci's, so I have to assume this whole row of cases was brought in from one of those closed stores from which ACME bought the fixtures. They're in good shape (except, of course, for the fact that there's no milk in these cases). Also possible that these are temporary -- my ACME in Kenilworth briefly used Balducci's freezers while they were waiting for the new ones.

I've seen the addition of doors to existing cases at other remodeled Albertsons stores, too.

Here we have bakery and deli in the front corner, and notice that they did actually take down the A&P "Corner Bakery" sign!

Deli was redone a little more after I was here. Acme Style reports that about half of the deli case is now an upright case for packaged prepared foods and cheeses, and the other half of the case has been replaced.

Here we see a little bit of the relocated customer service counter (far left), along with the front end. Three registers (plus I think five self-checkouts?), although the lane markers have not been replaced. Hoboken is looking really good, and make sure to check out the ACME Markets Reddit forum for more updates from Acme Style. But that's only half of the ACMEs we'll be seeing today! Now on to our next stop...

Midland Park

The renovation at Midland Park is done, and like Hoboken, it was pretty extensive. Midland Park was a beautiful store before but the Fresh 2.0 decor was starting to show signs of age if only because of its slightly older style. I mentioned on the original post that I wondered how the store was doing because it had been basically left untouched since day one when ACME took over. Well, it turns out they were just waiting to do a much larger renovation, which appears to be completed.

We enter to floral in the front corner. As we'll see, most of the fixtures in the grand aisle have been replaced.

The only thing left over from A&P here are the refrigerators around the perimeter of the store. The rest is all new, including the lighting although the fixtures themselves are left over. (Or actually were these fixtures installed when ACME moved in?)

Notice the rounded lights that originally would've gone around the curved department signage.

The deli island has seen significant changes, with the long-closed prepared foods departments replaced with upright refrigerators for cheeses and packaged prepared foods...

So the service counter has gotten slightly smaller, but in reality a lot of those other service counters weren't being used anyway.

Signage (and fixtures, for that matter) are looking better here than Clark, an earlier Fresh 2.0-to-Quality Built remodel.

An oddly washed-out Proudly Serving You sign brings us into the newly reopened liquor store in the back corner. As we can see above, the new liquor store spills out onto the main supermarket's sales floor a little more than it used to, and there's a new register that's been added in the front.

All new shelving and fixtures here. It's really beautiful!

Up next we have meat and seafood on the back wall, which have also gotten new cases. New flooring in this section, but notice that a few of the A&P Fresh 2.0 picture signs remain behind the service counters.

Looking across to the left side of the store. Again, all this flooring is new.

Neither the flooring nor the fixtures are new in the grocery aisles, however. The HABA department is in the first few aisles which extend out from the pharmacy on the front wall.

I'm not sure if the lighting here was left over from A&P or if it was replaced when ACME moved in, but it certainly wasn't replaced in the latest remodel. While the store is plenty bright, it's not like the stores where the lighting has been replaced such as Warren.

Bakery department in the back corner, and this lighting has definitely been updated. A&P's wood-texture flooring is left here.

Frozen foods in the last few aisles, and what do we have here? Looks like ACME missed a few aisle markers!

Here in the last aisle, the cases remain from A&P but ACME has installed doors on the front of the dairy cases.

For whatever reason, the aisle markers in the last two aisles are left over from A&P still. The yellow paint here in the dairy department has grown on me -- I used to really dislike it but it looks pretty good in some of the latest renovations. I wish the flooring had been replaced throughout, but it's in pretty good shape.

A look across the front-end shows the noticeably dimmer lighting than in the newer renovations. The store is looking good, though!

And here we see the side of the customer service/pharmacy departments, with some self-checkouts and a very cool version of the retro-stylized logo. When are we going to get this on the storefronts?! Well, that wraps up today's two ACMEs, but don't forget to see today's other posts here:

• Update: SuperFresh - Roselle, NJ
• Update: City Supermarkets - Fairview, NJ
• Update: Universal Food Markets - Rahway, NJ
• Special Report: Armata's Market - Longmeadow, MA