TOUR: Kings Food Markets - Whitehouse Station, NJ

Kings Food Markets

Opened: 1997

Previous Tenants: A&P (early 1980s-mid 1990s)

Location: 531 US-22, Whitehouse Station, NJ

Photographed: March 2020 and December 2021

We've come to our final Kings location in New Jersey, and the second-to-last that we haven't seen yet! (The last is Greenwich, CT, which at the time of writing I sadly do not have photographed.) This store has an interesting history, which I've pieced together with available information and aerial photographs. JoshAustin610 says that this building opened as an A&P in the 60s, becoming a Kings in the 80s. Unfortunately, both of those claims are a bit suspect given that the strip mall doesn't appear in aerial photographs until 1984, when it looks newly constructed. It was almost definitely constructed as an A&P at that time. The strip mall was expanded to its current layout between 1997 and 2002, likely on the earlier end of that spectrum, and that was immediately following Kings' opening, then renovated at some point between 2012 and 2016, and looking at this store, I'd say on the earlier end of that. The store is only 24,000 square feet, which is in line with what A&P was building in the early 80s. It seems that the renovation was done at the very end of A&P's time here, since Kings signed the lease for this property in 1996 and it appears the store was then opened in 1997.

This store was among the 19 Kings locations that Albertsons purchased in January 2021. Today, we enter to floral in the front right corner, with produce lining the right side of the first aisle and a cheese island on the left. Seafood and meat line the back wall with frozen in the middle of the store (another A&P trait), dairy in the last aisle, and deli/bakery in the front left corner. I revisited the store this past December and we'll see a few small changes at the end of this post.

Looking into the front corner. We can see the entrance/exit foyer design is distinctly 90s A&P, again suggesting that A&P did a large remodel inside and outside right before they closed.

Here we're looking down the first aisle. Notice the earlier-style Artisanal Cheese signage, which suggests Kings' interior remodel here would've been closer to the 2012 end of the renovations for Kings.

Now that we've gotten that history out of the way, there's not too much interesting here. It's rather like all the other Kings we've seen with a few specific exceptions. The chalkboards and chalkboard-style signage were likely added more recently than the store was remodeled.

Here's the back part of produce.

Seafood and meat are in the back of the store, and it does interest me that there are in fact two beige colors on the walls. It's not too noticeable though, just strange that it would've been designed that way.

Looking across the back wall of the store. I think it's likely many of these fixtures are left over from A&P, although the grocery shelving was almost definitely replaced...

We don't see the typical shelving overhangs with lights that normally appear in the 90s A&Ps, but it's also possible A&P never replaced the shelving here. I'm unsure whether the overhang in the picture below is left over from A&P, but I'm inclined to say it's not because it more closely resembles what other Kings stores have.

But in a distinctly A&P fashion, frozen foods run straight up the middle of the store. These cases, clearly, have been replaced.

A look at the back wall from the dairy side back towards seafood/produce...

And dairy continues along the outside wall of the store.

This aisle is unusually wide, making me wonder if A&P had more aisles than Kings does now. It's hard to tell since the flooring (and likely the ceiling, too) has been replaced.

Up here in the front corner of the store, though, we have a dead giveaway for a 1990s A&P -- the bottom trim along the overhang wall, with the lighting up onto the wall. While it looks like the lighting has been replaced and the trim has been painted, that (along with the diagonal wall sections) are exactly what we'd expect from the 90s A&Ps. That picture and the previous one, by the way, are from Warren, which is roughly 14 miles due east from here.

Not much else left from A&P in what's now the Market Square, though. And it does look like the front end has also been changed a bit, and part of it that's now a catering office and this single-serve drink case was almost deinitely more registers when A&P was here.

This Kings competes with Bishop's, an IGA that's slightly smaller, just to the west along 22, which you can tour here. Now for an updated exterior picture...

Beautiful sky on the day that I visited! Inside, not much has changed (we do see the typical Albertsons reset with new price tags, register systems, and Signature/O Organics brands), but we also see new lighting...

The fixtures seen above are built into the ceiling in the same squares that the old ones were, but they're much brighter. They're curved into the ceiling with the light bar running through the middle while the old ones were flat. On the front end, we see that the store was cut back to 3 full-service registers (instead of 4 previously) with 5 new self-checkouts.

As I said, that's our last Kings, but there's plenty more to see for sure. Tomorrow, we move just a bit south to Flemington for two stores here on The Market Report!