TOUR: Supremo Food Market - Pennsauken, NJ

Supreme Food Market
Owner: Eddie Trujillo

Opened: 2016

Previous Tenants: GEX > Kmart (closed 2003) > Supremo Food Market (ca. 2003-ca. 2005) > Shop n Bag (ca. 2005-2016)

Cooperative: none

Location: 7500 S Crescent Blvd, Pennsauken, NJ

Photographed: January 2021

We arrive at the final Pennsauken store which is also the last Supremo we'll see in New Jersey -- and yes, we've seen every Supremo in NJ along with all the former stores. This one is a bit different from the other Supremos that we've seen because, although I knew at the time it was really large, I didn't realize that the store (along with its associated wholesale warehouse division next door) makes up 70,000 square feet -- or almost double the next largest Supremo. This store and its strip mall were built on the site of an airport and was built as a GEX membership warehouse store, later Kmart, which closed in 2003. Supremo opened shortly thereafter, making this their second store in Pennsauken (their first opened in 1999). It was then briefly a Shop n Bag from around 2005 to the coop's dissolution, in 2016, when it was returned to Supremo. Much to my amusement, there is a sign facing route 38 from the store's original opening as Supremo that was left up for the entirety of its time as Shop n Bag, and now the store is Supremo again!

This store may be the largest, but it's also the oldest (which is to say, un-renovated) in the chain. All the others we've seen have been renovated but to my knowledge this one has not yet. It's showing its age, although it mostly looks pretty good. Maintenance has been good here, such as the awnings with their light fixtures -- no rips and no burnt-out lights, but not a very modern design.

Deli-bakery are in an island facing produce, with packaged meats behind produce. An enormous service butcher is on the back wall with dairy on the rest of the back wall, and a closed service seafood counter faces the back wall in the island. Frozen takes up the last aisle. I don't believe this store ever had a pharmacy, but it's certainly large enough to.

Interesting choice with the exposed HVAC, which I assume is left over from a previous tenant.

While the store might be the same layout we're familiar with from other Supremos, we can tell it's much larger with the sale items taking up lots of sales floor space.

Large service butcher at the back. To my surprise, the seafood counter was closed up here. I wonder why it wasn't simply downsized and consolidated with butcher -- maybe they do a lot of meat business, enough to justify keeping this counter fully open, but basically no seafood.

On the back wall, we have cold cuts and dairy. The former seafood counter faces...

This is the single part of the store that doesn't seem to be in great repair. As we see, though, there's otherwise lots of stock and otherwise maintenance is great in terms of wall decor, floor, and lighting/ceiling.

Main display in the first aisle, on the back of the deli/bakery/seafood island.

As we can tell, the minor upgrades at stores like Trenton aren't present here (the flooring/paint upgrade). That would fix up the store very significantly.

It looks like some fixtures, like these coffin cases and the other freezers, may have been brought in secondhand from elsewhere when the store opened.

Lots more HABA/cleaning/home goods here than we see in most Supremos, which keep that to a minimum.

Taking a look at the aisle markers here in aisle 12. These were almost definitely secondhand when the store opened, since they don't match what would've been used with this decor package. Here's a very faded paper products ad with a fresh Supremo sticker, but the other end of the aisle wasn't so lucky...

Note that this may even be over an original Supremo logo, so the other one would be Supremo over Shop n Bag over Supremo.

Freezer cases may or may not have been new at the time of opening. Again, because of the store's larger size, frozen continues onto the front wall.

And here we also have more cleaning/home goods/sale items in the front. Beyond that is the front-end...

That wraps up the Pennsauken Supremo! Our next stop is going to be just south along route 130, a former supermarket over on Grocery Archaeology. Stay tuned!