TOUR: ACME Markets - Jenkintown, PA

ACME Markets

Opened: 1997

Previous Tenants: Lord & Taylor (closed by 1997)

Location: 323 Old York Rd, Jenkintown, PA

Photographed: July 30, 2021

It's time for our final store in the Lower Montgomery county area! Yesterday we saw the Whole Foods in Jenkintown, and that store was an ACME until 1997. At that time, they moved into part of a former Lord & Taylor store about a mile and a half away. This has to be one of the larger ACMEs, too, at over 70,000 square feet (roughly 78,000 to be exact).

Acme Style had a wonderful post on this store, but that seems to have vanished with all traces of Acme Style. In case the blog ever comes back, though, here's the link. Acme Style points out that the former entrance for the department store, seen here, is not the main entrance to the supermarket anymore. The main entrance is just to the right. This is actually the back of the building, and the front (facing the street) has no entrances.

This store is about the same era as Lincroft, and is a nearly identical store if much larger. Both stores were built in the late 90s with the chalkboard market decor, although this one was later renovated to Premium Fresh & Healthy 1.0. Both stores received the Quality Built decor around 2016-17.

The layout is exactly the same here as Lincroft, just with a few added departments. Just like Lincroft, I think Quality Built is an excellent fit for the chalkboard market bones of this store's decor.

Bakery and deli are in the island facing produce, with meat/seafood in the back right corner. I think the flooring and fixtures look great here with the dark ceiling. Also the lighting updates done with Quality Built make the store plenty bright, though of course I miss the specific, focused lighting of chalkboard market.

Produce in the front corner. 

And other than this single shelf right here, we see the produce department is fully stocked and nicely organized.

About halfway to the back of the grand aisle (between deli and bakery in the island) is the Frosted Mug cafe, complete with its register. Prepared foods and deli are to the right...

And across from that are the cheese and packaged deli areas. It looks like cheese may have originally been in these cases, but was moved into islands between this case and the deli department.

A very nice and rather large meat and seafood counter is in the back right corner. I really like the tile backsplash here, which I believe is left over from PF&H 1.0.

Deli on the other side of the grand aisle. You can see the main supermarket behind it, too.

Meats run along the back wall with grocery aisles in the center store. Like Lincroft, there is a drop ceiling over the grocery aisles, unfortunately.

Unlike Lincroft, the first aisle is a kosher department. I am in fact wondering if this was previously a natural foods department that was switched over to kosher at some point.

And the front half of the first aisle is the beer and wine department.

As we see, the grocery aisles are split in half from front-to-back. Notice the newer lighting over this middle aisle and the older tube lighting over the aisles.

I'm not sure whether the flooring in the aisles was replaced at any time, or if this is original from the chalkboard market decor. It looks like it's around the same color as the QB flooring, but maybe a little more brown than gray, so I would guess it has not been replaced.

Like Lincroft, frozen goes straight up the middle of the store. The back wall is split between meat (on the right/produce side) and dairy (on the left/pharmacy side). The rounded overhangs are of course left over from PF&H 1.0...

It's slightly unusual to see an ACME with such a substantial part of dairy on the back wall, but here the pharmacy takes up about half of the outside wall.

Aisle 12, of course.

And if we go down the last aisle, here's the view across the middle aisle of the store looking back towards the grand aisle.

The lighting does look fantastic with the Quality Built decor, but again, this decor doesn't do too much for me. It's fine but it's not better than fine. This decor at Albertsons' Star Market up in Boston is better than fine.

But I appreciate the nod to ACME's history, of course.

Here's the PF&H 1.0-era pharmacy in the front half of the last aisle.

And a look across the front end, with the department store's original entrance and exit visible to the right above. This is quite a beautiful store, but could be brought to the next level with new and better decor. Still a great reuse of a former department store! That is all for this part of Montgomery County, and up next we're going to cut across the region from Morrisville to Audubon. That almost sounds like the name of a group... so stay tuned!