TOUR: McCaffrey's Food Markets - Blue Bell, PA

McCaffrey's Food Markets

Owner: Jim McCaffrey III

Opened: 2016
Cooperative: none
Location: 1301 W Skippack Pk, Blue Bell, PA

Photographed: July 22, 2021

We are touring our next McCaffrey's Food Market, which I believe is also the largest in the chain at apparently around 75,000 square feet. This store was built as a Clemens, which became SuperFresh in 2006 and McCaffrey's in 2016 when A&P went under. If you look carefully at my first picture, you'll notice that there's still a Clemens Cleaners, presumably unrelated to the supermarket chain, right next door.

We enter through a hallway that then turns us to the left into the grand aisle. At the front of the grand aisle are floral, coffee/juice, and bakery, with produce behind that and then meat, seafood, and cheese at the back. The rest of the meat department lines the back wall, with deli in the back right corner along with the beer and wine department. Dairy is in the first aisle and frozen is in the last.

This is one of McCaffrey's newest stores, so it is quite beautiful. The high ceilings in the main supermarket space are used well...

Here's where we enter to the coffee shop and floral department, then walk over into the gorgeous bakery.

I think it goes without saying that McCaffrey's has nothing left from SuperFresh or any previous tenant.

Looking back up towards the front entrance. There's a row of storefronts in front of McCaffrey's, necessitating the hallway entrance/exit. If I remember correctly, there's also an exit to the side of the store, where there's an additional parking lot.

Produce is opposite the perimeter departments, with the grocery aisles behind it.

Absolutely everything about the store's layout, display, and decor are top-notch. Beautiful perishables, too, very high-quality.

We can tell this is on the large side for a McCaffrey's, with lots of large displays of things we might not typically find in supermarkets. Like absolutely everything above, which is between bakery and seafood.

I'm a little curious about the stacks of soda and chips in part of the seafood department, since that's something we usually see as a space-filler when a department is closed or downsized. However, the seafood department is quite sizeable as it is today, and I don't see any evidence that anything was removed from that area, so it's probably just a seasonal merchandising area.

Nuts and olives in the middle, with cheese to the right at the back of the grand aisle.

And one more look up towards the front of the grand aisle before moving on...

The actual butcher counter is under the area in the back with the low ceiling, and meats continue along the back wall.

And as we can see below, once you leave this back corner, the ceiling goes up high again in the back. I'm not sure why it was constructed this way, if there was some previous tenant with a reason to have the ceiling at different heights like this.

Here we can see that the grand aisle is quite large and spacious, but also packs a lot of offerings and services in the space.

And deli, with a beautiful stone texture on the walls, is in the back right corner.

In something we don't usually see, aisle 1 is dairy, with the produce department on the other side of the cases to the right. In the below picture, we're looking up towards the front of the store.

The back of the produce department sign is used to full advantage with a large dairy sign on the back.

And customer service up at the front of the aisles, with the registers beyond that.

As we can see, the grocery aisles are very nice but the focus here is the perimeter. That's where most of the space in the store is dedicated to.

At the last time I checked, McCaffrey's was not a member of any cooperative but sold Essential Everyday products from UNFI.

This is a really beautifully designed deli/prepared foods area with great signage, great textures on the walls and floor, and great lighting especially with the big windows.

And the grocery aisles facing the deli area.

As we can see, the low ceiling comes back in the last few aisles. Again, I couldn't exactly tell why the ceiling height changes so much in the store.

And in the back we enter the beer and wine department, where the cafe also is.

Absolutely gorgeous design here, too, with a very inviting cafe that has windows out to the main supermarket but is otherwise closed off, which helps with noise and traffic.

And the frozen foods aisles are in front of that area.

Even in the areas with the lower ceilings, the decor is still impressive!

And that about wraps up our look at this McCaffrey's! Quite a beautiful reuse of this old Clemens/SuperFresh and a really well-run store from what I could tell.

Next week we move on to our next group, which we'll begin about ten miles east of here! Have a good weekend, everyone!