TOUR: ShopRite - Burlington, NJ

ShopRite of Burlington
Owner: Karl Eickhoff

Opened: 2015

Previous Tenants: Kmart

Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.

Location: 1817 Mount Holly Rd, Burlington, NJ

Photographed: January 2021

We are here at the Wishing Well Plaza to tour the roughly 92,000 square foot ShopRite of Burlington, NJ. This store opened in 2015 as a replacement for the Willingboro store around two and a half miles southwest (which we'll be seeing tomorrow), in a former Kmart.

I remember many years ago, probably around 2013-14, I stopped at the Cinnaminson ShopRite (roughly 10 miles southwest, but opened not long before this one and of a similar design and the same owners) for lunch and ate in the second-floor cafe, marveling at this wonder of grocery retail design. Well, I haven't been back to Cinnaminson since, but I thought it would be worth stopping by Burlington to check it out when I was down in the area in January 2021.

There's an entrance and exit at each end, as we see here, but this is the main one. Entering here will bring you into the Fresh to Table (prepared foods) department, with a cafe to the left in the front corner and more prepared foods and deli on the left side of the grand aisle. Produce is on the right side, with bakery and seafood at the back. A large liquor store takes up the first few aisles, with meat on the back wall and dairy in the last aisle. Frozen foods are in part of the last aisle and then two aisles on the front wall, running perpendicular to the rest of the aisles in the store. Pharmacy and dietitian are then between frozen and the front-end.

Fresh to Table was installed more recently than the store's opening, so the design doesn't quite match. It's still very attractive, though. This is on the corner of the deli area on the left side of the grand aisle, with a very nice cafe tucked away in the corner to the left of this.

For whatever reason my phone was taking some time to warm up, I suppose, since these first few pictures are pretty bad. They get better by the end. The store was quite empty at the time of my visit (roughly 10 AM on a Friday) but I get the feeling this, like most other ShopRites, is an extremely high-volume store.

A blurry look at the grand aisle's right side, with produce over here and the service departments lining the wall to the left.

Here we're looking across to Fresh to Table and the grill area. You can see the service departments continuing to the right. Beautiful ceiling (/beam structure) over these departments! As you might expect with an interior like this, the Burlington ShopRite was designed by Off the Wall.

The backlit produce pictures are a really nice touch over here! And quite the expansive produce department.

Deli and prepared foods lining the left wall of the grand aisle, with the fire-grilled chicken station at the front. This was a feature that was originated in the Brown's ShopRites in the Philadelphia area, designed to be a healthier alternative to fried chicken, where the chicken is grilled to-order exhibition cooking-style in front of you.

Love the flooring, too.

An enormous bakery takes up the back corner of the store. This was my first of many stops this day, so unfortunately I was unable to purchase anything.

This part of the decor, which looks really stunning in person, was also used in a few Key Food stores owned by Dan's Supreme Supermarkets, such as Arden Ave (where I haven't been yet) and Whitestone. Unfortunately it doesn't so much show up in my pictures of Whitestone, but trust me, it's there. Anyway, those stores were also designed by Off the Wall.

Floral in an island facing the entrance, with a very large and really beautiful liquor store taking up the first few aisles here.

And looking towards the front wall from the back of the first aisle. I'm sure liquor is a big seller here, too, given how much space they dedicate to it.

Here on the back wall we have the meat department (and a service butcher just out of frame to the left). In the first grocery aisle, we see something I'm not accustomed to seeing in ShopRites...

An equivalent of the famous main display, showing sale items in one place. Disappointingly, there are no impressive stacks to the ceiling of canned goods, just regular quantities on shelves. I assume this was added as center-store filler because the sales floor is so darn big here.

Not a whole lot to see in the grocery aisles, but they're pleasasntly well-stocked and organized. Nice and clean.

In the HABA department, we have a little visual interest with this hanging trim structure. Kind of like crown moulding without a wall -- or a ceiling.

Cold cuts at the end of the back wall, with milk in the corner and then the rest of dairy in the last aisle. Notice the imagery here, and the "fresh" text, is more of the same that was used in the Key Foods, but that the decor packages aren't identical.

Nice windows here in the last aisle, and they really brighten up the interior. One side of this aisle is frozen foods, with more frozen foods in the front corner of the store in two aisles that run parallel to the front wall of the store.

These are older-looking cases, with the metal trim and white paneling. I'd expect to see black cases here, more like what's in the grand aisle and some of the meat department. It makes me wonder whether some of these cases may have been brought in secondhand, possibly even from the closed Willingboro ShopRite, but that seems unlikely.

More frozen foods on the front wall. It feels like this frozen department is simply enormous, but I think it's a combination of two factors that create that illusion: first, it's spread out in several different aisles, and second, the store is over 90,000 square feet -- so it's probably perfectly normal, in terms of proportion to the other departments.

Here we have the dietitian's office and pharmacy in the front. Speaking of proportion, doesn't this seem like a weirdly small pharmacy counter for the store's enormous size? Anyway, what's certainly not small for the store is the front-end...

Enormous! Anyhow, that's all for this store. Don't forget to see the former ACME just down Mount Holly Road, and tomorrow check out two stores -- one each on Grocery Archaeology and The Independent Edition. Over and out for today, see you tomorrow!