TOUR: Grocery Outlet - Easton, PA

Grocery Outlet

Owner: Dane & Natalie Sanford

Opened: 2018

Previous Tenants: assorted non-grocery tenants

Location: 2541 Nazareth Rd, Easton, PA

Photographed: January 8, 2021

It's time for another Grocery Outlet! We saw one back in Philadelphia, and this promising hard-discount format is quickly growing in the Philadelphia/New Jersey area. The most recent opening in the area was in Hazlet, NJ, just next to the former ALDI we saw when we were down there. (I suppose I shouldn't say the format is promising as it's already been proven successful in this area and elsewhere, instead, it seems to be a successful addition to this area's competitive grocery market.) I visited my first Grocery Outlet ever back in 2015 in Allentown and was rather impressed. Unlike other discount stores that rely primarily on private label products, Grocery Outlet has a mix of storebrand and name brand items, and this 25,000 square foot store is a pleasant example of one of their newer stores.

We enter to nonfoods in the first aisle, with the perishables (produce/deli/meat) on the back wall.

It's definitely a hard-discount environment, but the product mix makes it noticeably different from a Save-A-Lot or ALDI.

On the back wall, we have the produce, deli, and meat departments. Of course, there's no in-store preparation for any of these items, so everything is prepackaged but the selection is not bad.

I find the Grocery Outlet stores to be attractive and well-run, generally, and note that like Save-A-Lot stores, they are independently owned and operated in a franchise arrangement.

You can see that, again unlike Save-A-Lot and ALDI, some products on the shelves are stocked, and others are in their cases.

This store is relatively new, having opened in 2018. It was quite deserted when I visited, but it was not a particularly busy time at any of the stores I went to around then. Five years later, I have to assume the store does alright volume or it wouldn't be open anymore.

Frozen foods in aisle 5, a mixture of the coffin cases and upright cases.

I don't recall seeing items with other supermarkets' storebrands on them here either, something you would regularly find at salvage or outlet grocery stores, but not at a store like ALDI or Save-A-Lot. Except, of course, for some anomalies like a group of Save-A-Lot stores in New England owned by a Key Food owner that sell some Urban Meadow (Key Food) storebrand items... but that's neither here nor there.

Bread in the back left corner.

Grocery Outlet stores feature a NOSH department, which is slang for snack and also stands for Natural, Organic, Specialty, and Healthy. That's where they put the natural products, which I don't believe they have mixed in with any other department.

Here's a look at the NOSH department in the front left corner of the store.

That wraps up our look at this Grocery Outlet, and that's actually our only full supermarket in Easton (there are many others, but it's the only one we'll be seeing).

Tomorrow we'll be checking out a store with a long grocery history that's still a grocer on The Independent Edition!