TOUR: Supremo Food Market - University City, Philadelphia, PA

Supremo Food Market

Owner: Eddie Trujillo

Opened: 2016

Previous Tenants: Penn Fruit (closed ca. 1970s) > Thriftway (ca. 1970s-ca. 2001) > Supreme Food Market (2003-2008) > Supreme Shop n Bag (2008-2016)

Cooperative: none

Location: 4301 Walnut St, University City, Philadephia, PA

Photographed: December 2021

It's been a while since we saw a Supremo, huh? Well, in addition to the 12 Supremos and Supremo-owned stores we've seen so far, there are two here in Philadelphia. The first is in the University City neighborhood, so named for its location with many universities in a very close radius, including the University of Pennsylvania. One of my best friends has a sister who lives in this neighborhood and works at Temple University in North Philadelphia, and she lives right between this Supremo and the ACME a few blocks away (previously The Fresh Grocer). Well, we talk about supemarkets and apparently they talk about me, so I got the news of this store's renovation from her via my friend.

She always shopped at the Supremo over the nearby Fresh Grocer, now ACME, because of pricing and selection. She has said that the ACME is no more expensive than The Fresh Grocer, but both are very expensive and Supremo is much more reasonable (which, of course, we might expect from what we know about their other stores). She also prefers the produce at Supremo. Anyhow, when I first heard that this store was undergoing a remodel, I assumed it would be a fairly minimal repaint and so on. In fact, it did involve repainting (but not replacing) the decor, but it also involved installing new flooring, lighting, and fixtures throughout.

This store opened as a roughly 13,000 square foot Penn Fruit in th 1950s or 60s, and was closed and converted to Thriftway by the end of the 70s. Over time, it was more than doubled in size to its present 30,000 square feet, and Thriftway closed up shop around 2001. Two years later, Plainfield, NJ-based Supremo renovated and reopened the store, but under the name Supreme Food Market. An article I can't find at the moment quoted owner Eddie Trujillo explaining the name difference given the fact there aren't too many Spanish speakers in this neighborhood. Either way, it became a Shop n Bag around 2008 and then back to Supremo when Thriftway/Shop n Bag dissolved in 2016. And yes, we've heard this song before.

The layout here is different from many Supremos, meaning it's likely left over from Thriftway. We enter and turn to the left for produce in the front left corner. Deli/bakery are on the left side wall with what looks like a soon-to-be butcher counter at the back of the first aisle. Meats then line the rest of the back wall, with frozen in aisle 8 and dairy on the outside of aisle 13. An alcove in the front right corner holds nonfoods, of which this store seems to carry more than the average Supremo.

As we can see clearly here, although the renovation did not involve changing the decor (which was previously the same as we saw in Pennsauken, linked above), it did bring a refresh with new paint and all new refrigerators around the store. I assume this was done in response to ACME's 2020 opening in the former Fresh Grocer. We'll be touring the ACME tomorrow.

Here's a look down the first aisle. We see the end of the freshly reset produce department to the left (with a large and, I'm sure, newly-added selection of organic produce, vegan meat substitutes, and kombucha), with baked goods behind it. The service deli is up next on the left side wall, with what appears to have been an in-progress butcher counter at the back.

Online reviews indicate that, like Pennsauken, this store previously had a seafood counter that was closed. In this renovation, the counter was either removed or absorbed into this corner. These fixtures are brand-new. I assume the counter at the back has since been opened as a butcher counter.

More new cases on the back wall, and we get a good sense of the beautiful new flooring here. The ceiling in the original supermarket is higher than that in the expansion, but sadly the arched roof is not exposed here.

Here's a look at the rest of the meat department in the main supermarket building.

Frozen foods line the middle of the original supermarket, which today is aisle 8. As we see, these cases are brand new as well.

A lot of similarities between this store and Trenton, although this one does much higher volume than Trenton and also is noticeably much larger -- almost double the size, in fact.

New flooring and cases look beautiful here in the dairy department in the last aisle. As much of an improvement as this renovation is, I'm not sold on the orange paint here in the dairy department.

This front corner was in the process of being reset at the time of my visit, and it looked like the grocery items (such as the ice cream items seen here) were being moved into the grocery aisles, and the nonfoods were all being moved up here. There were some spaces in the grocery aisles that were likely previously home to things like cat food, now up in this corner. And the rest of the front end to the right...

Supremo did a very nice job fixing up this older store, but for a really brand-new supermarket, people can go about three blocks east to the ACME -- if they're willing to pay the higher prices. As I said, that's tomorrow's tour, so come back to check it out!