TOUR: ShopRite - Flemington, NJ

ShopRite of Flemington

Owner: Joseph Colalillo

Opened: mid-1990s

Previous Tenants: none

Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.

Location: 272 US-202, Flemington, NJ

Photographed: January 2021

We saw a brief look at the Stop & Shop just north of Flemington today, and now we're going to check out the larger store in town, the 78,000 square foot ShopRite which was constructed in the 1990s as the third ShopRite in town. The first was at 95 Main St in downtown Flemington, which moved to this property in 1965 although the original store was demolished when this one opened.

The exterior actually has some notable similarities to Pathmarks of the era, and as we'll see, there are some similarities in interior design to later eras of Pathmark decor.

This store seems to do a very big business and also seems to be very well-run, which I've heard goes for all of Colalillo's stores. Colalillo is also the CEO of Wakefern, the cooperative that supports ShopRite stores. Let's head in...

Heading in, we find floral immediately inside the entrance to the right. Bakery, deli, prepared foods, and seafood line the right side wall of the grand aisle, with produce facing on the left. Pharmacy is in an island on the front-end, with meat on the back wall and dairy/frozen at the far left.

The pharmacy is on the other side of that produce market sign. As we see, this store is looking very good (and obviously it's not that old, but it seems to have been renovated at least once or twice since it opened) but the ceiling feels oddly low throughout.

We move on to a very attractive bakery in the front corner. This isn't the first Colalillo ShopRite we've seen, although the tour of Bethlehem I have is disappointingly bad. As we see, the decor here is scaled down a little because of the lower ceiling.

I also point out in the Bethlehem post that the decor package is quite similar to Pathmark's last decor package.

A beautiful cheese island is in the middle of the grand aisle, with additional prepared packaged foods around the outside.

And the deli is opposite. As much as I do like this decor, we find that the signage is not overly easy to distinguish from the wall because it's not lit.

One of this store's largest departments is the prepared foods counter on the back wall, with hot and cold prepared foods, pizza, a grill, and a to-order sandwich counter. Oddly, though, there's no cafe seating area in-store.

I love the design of this area!

And then we move on to seafood up next on the back wall. Notice that all the cases we've seen so far are the same gray from this decor package except for that one upright one to the right of the service counter -- I wonder why that wasn't painted.

Natural meat and then the rest of the meat department take up an alcove in the back, which forms another aisle along the back wall of the store.

Grocery aisles are to the left of the freezer cases to the left.

And heading into the first few aisles, we have a beautiful, newly-renovated HABA department with the pharmacy in the front.

And you can see customer service on the front wall.

I love to see this serious remodeling being done in the aisles -- so often they're just forgotten while the perimeter gets the big investment.

We have frozen and dairy down at the end of the store to the far left side. Again, notice how low this ceiling is.

I'm forgetting specifically how this area is set up, but I believe that dairy begins on the back wall and continues down the outside of the last aisle. The paper goods we see to the left above, then, are actually perpendicular to the grocery aisles and not in a grocery aisle.

Dairy and frozen in the last aisle. And as we move towards the front end, we see the beautiful register setups with hanging lighting...

Looking great! Don't forget to check out the Stop & Shop here, and tomorrow we move on south for a really interesting little store on The Independent Edition!