TOUR: The Market of Lafayette Hill - Lafayette Hill, PA

The Market of Lafayette Hill
Owner: Renee Riccio

Opened: 2003

Cooperative: none
Location: 531 Germantown Pk, Lafayette Hill, PA

Photographed: July 22, 2021

The Market of Lafayette Hill is the small community of Lafayette Hill's only grocery store. The 11,000 square foot higher-end supermarket is small but very complete and a really pleasant place. It opened in the 1960s as a Thriftway, and JoshAustin610 notes that it left the Thriftway cooperative by the 90s. The Market of Lafayette Hill opened here in 2003, presumably under different ownership from the previous Thriftway.

You may recall that this store is under the same ownership as the Gladwyne Market. This store is much larger than that one, but similarly quaint, and with a focus on the higher end food items.

We enter with a small customer service counter, which doubles as the office (check out the stairs behind the mirrored windows), and the bakery counter in the front right corner. Produce lines the rest of the first aisle, with frozen foods on the back wall. Service and packaged meat are on the left side wall, with dairy facing. Deli and prepared foods are in the front left corner.

We can tell that, although the store is definitely older, it's certainly higher-end. The bakery features items like locally made candies from Asher's Chocolates, for instance.

And produce takes up the rear part of the first aisle. As we see, the fixtures are on the older side but maintenance here has been spectacular.

How old do we think these department signs are? It looks like this decor may have been painted after it was initially installed, but I would bet it's older than this store's 2003 opening.

Frozen foods on the back wall here. I assume this fixture on the right for firewood and charcoal was previously a produce fixture.

In the grocery aisles, we have a mix of basic items and higher-end items, but a pretty large selection throughout.

I don't recall seeing a storebrand here, although I do think there are Seven Farms organic products. I don't remember a regular storebrand like Best Yet or something.

As we see, this is a very complete little supermarket. There's nothing missing from the product mix here. In the last aisle, we have service meat and seafood in the back, with dairy facing and packaged meats in the middle.

Again, if we look carefully at the decor, it looks like there was older decor (like paneling) that was painted over.

And the deli is in the front corner. There's a pretty large selection of prepared foods and other similar items for such a small store, which again helps the store's higher-end positioning.

This area, too, looks newer than the rest of the store. This may be something Market of Lafayette Hill added when they opened. And on the front-end, notice the soup and salad signage, both of which are from Supervalu's Premium Fresh & Healthy decor, and which were apparently sent to certain independent stores that were at the time supplied by Supervalu.

But we see by looking across the front end that this is not a large store at all, despite the fact that it's a very complete supermarket. Up next is a big-chain supermarket about two miles west with an interesting history -- check it out on The Market Report tomorrow!