TOUR: ShopRite - Cheltenham, PA

ShopRite of Cheltenham
Owner: Jeff Brown

Opened: 1995

Previous Tenants: Gimbel's (department store)

Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.

Location: 2471 W Cheltenham Ave, Cheltenham, PA

Photographed: July 22, 2021

We're outside of Philadelphia (or maybe we're not, depending on who you ask, but Greenleaf at Cheltenham is not legally within the city limits of Philadelphia), but this area still feels a lot like Philadelphia proper. The mall, which was previously called the Cheltenham Mall, was constructed in the 1960s with department store Gimbel's taking roughly 200,000 square feet over two floors. Gimbel's was closed by 1986 and the massive anchor space remained vacant for almost 10 years until ShopRite moved into the lower floor of the space in 1995. Burlington later moved into the upper floor. I'm not sure if the ShopRIte has been owned by Brown's since it opened, but it is currently owned by Jeff Brown. Although it's hard to tell for sure, it looks like the ShopRite takes up a little less than half of the former Gimbel's space, at around 80,000 square feet.

Here you can get a good sense of just how massive this space is. The ShopRite, like yesterday's H Mart, does have a little basement feeling to it, but it certainly feels much larger and more spacious.

As we'll see, the store has gotten quite a few updates but there are some odd relics outside. This cart corral, for instance, is original to the store's opening, as is that blue cart. You can see one of the newer black and gray carts behind it, and you can see two of the newer cart corrals in the next row of parking. And as usual, we are greeted by the slightly creepy, slightly charming life-size Jeff Brown cutout at the entrance...

I do believe a lot of the supermarket and retail lovers that are active online have strong opinions about the Brown's ShopRites. Some seem to strongly dislike them, others strongly like them. I must say that I think they're some of the consistently best-run supermarkets in the Philadelphia area and they do an exceptional job of catering to the specific customers who shop there. We'll see evidence of that as we tour the store. Not to mention the fact that Brown's locates many of its stores in lower-income areas or areas that lack food access, and they continue to operate well-run, large, clean, and well-stocked supermarkets in neighborhoods that other chains, like ACME and Giant in this area, avoid.

As I said, we can get the sense we're in a basement here but it's a very attractive store. Much like we saw in Parkside, this store has gotten several updates (especially to the grand aisle) pretty recently. The last major remodel was in 2011, and since then, there have been some small updates.

The grand aisle has produce and international foods on the right side, with bakery, deli, and seafood around the left side. There's also a prepared foods section, including another outpost of a restaurant.

It's a very attractive, if not exactly modern and trendy, supermarket. But the store looks really good overall, and the careful maintenance helps with that.

I assume this is a very high-volume store, not just because of its size and relative lack of competition, but also because the perishables departments are all piled with stock and the service departments are very large. The deli takes up most of the left side wall of the store, and the seafood department takes up the back left corner...

It's a very large seafood department for a store like ShopRite, and it certainly puts competitors like ACME and Giant to shame. So does the produce department, too, in part because of its addition of international produce items where produce and the international foods department meet at the back of the grand aisle.

I didn't realize before visiting the Brown's stores in person that this decor was actually three-dimensional. I assumed the fruit and vegetables were just illustrations on the department signage. Here, we can clearly see that's not true.

The international foods department takes up the back part of the grand aisle, with more international items in the regular grocery aisles. Opposite international foods is the halal department...

As we see, it's a very extensive selection of international and specialty foods here. Around the corner from the halal butcher is a natural and organic meat department, with the rest of the regular meat department on the back wall.

We can tell Parkside has a little more space and higher ceilings in areas like this, although I think this store may actually be slightly larger than Parkside.

HABA is in the first few aisles, and in front of that is an area that was previously a pharmacy and is now a beer and wine department.

The grocery aisles are pretty standard but, as we saw in Parkside, exceptionally clean.

Here's the Brown's Beer Garden with beer and wine in the former pharmacy near the front. This opens out to the front-end.

Jumping across the store to the back wall, we find the Wall of Values in the back right corner.

Frozen foods are in the second-to-last aisle and one side of the last aisle. Although there are only 13 aisles in total, they're very long so the store is in fact quite large.

Dairy and frozen here in the last aisle.

I can't say I'm a huge fan of the blue and brown checkerboard flooring but it could be worse. It mostly fades away because it's not very bold.

One more shot of the dairy department, although for the life of me I can't remember where this is (front right corner, on the front wall...?). Customer service is beyond the registers on the front wall, as we see below. We also see below the newer gray and black carts, which I mentioned in the beginning of the post.

Well, if you liked this ShopRite, you're in luck -- Brown's owns a second store about half a mile west. We'll be headed there shortly but first we have one store in between, right here tomorrow on The Market Report!