Update: SuperFresh - Roselle, NJ

SuperFresh

Owner: Howard Lee / Food World Supermarkets

Opened: 2017

Previous Tenants: Food Fair > Pantry Pride > Foodtown > Food King > A Seabra Foods

Cooperative: Key Food Stores

Location: 550 Raritan Rd, Roselle, NJ

Photographed: July 29, 2022

Another return to the Roselle SuperFresh finally shows something happening at the storm-damaged property whose supermarket closed almost a year ago now. It just so happened that the day I visited, there was work going on inside the store. It appears that some of the fixtures are being removed as we see the sales floor looking a bit emptier than it used to be. I also walked up to the store and looked into the front window, only to be taken aback by the produce case to the right in the below picture apparently spinning around of its own volition. A couple seconds later I saw the forklift. That's no fun.

We have confirmation, too, that this SuperFresh was in fact waiting on approval from insurance to rebuild. And insurance has approved their claim, which means that construction is actually starting and the store is scheduled to reopen in the spring of 2023. That's a long time, but they're basically starting from scratch.

The above picture was taken a few seconds after the first, once the forklift had driven out the back with the refrigerator. Notice that most of the remaining pieces of equipment on the part of the floor that wasn't damaged have been removed. Also notice the "s" lying on the floor to the right -- I'm not entirely sure where that was from. Could be from Customer Service or the Solution Center, which were both in this corner of the store. I couldn't tell for certain, but it looked like the registers had been pulled out too.

And the fixtures were being loaded onto this tractor trailer and a flatbed behind it. I assume that one of two things is going on here. Either they need to get heavy equipment inside the building to rebuild it and need to clear the floor to navigate it, or the insurance is paying for replacement of everything in the building. In the latter case, they could easily send the fixtures to an older store in need of new refrigerators, and bring in all-new ones here. But the fixtures are very cleared out...

...and that goes for the deli room, too. This doesn't exactly look like the interior of a store that's preparing to re-open, but I don't know what the process for reopening might be. We'll just have to wait and see. And you can bet I'll keep tabs on the reopening construction. Anyway, tomorrow is back to Philadelphia on Grocery Archaeology!