Special Report: ShopRite - Fair Lawn, NJ

ShopRite of Maple & Hemlock

Owner: Lawrence Inserra / Inserra Supermarket

Opened: June 16, 2023

Previous Tenants: Pathmark (1970s-2015)

Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.

Location: 22-00 Maple Ave, Fair Lawn, NJ

Photographed: June 16, 2023

Welcome, everybody, to the newest ShopRite! This store opened yesterday -- Friday, June 16, 2023 -- at 7 am replacing an older store just a little over half a mile to the southeast. The 70,000 square foot store is built partially into a former Pathmark, although the store was extensively changed (and mostly demolished) for ShopRite's opening. I was here around 11 am yesterday, so I was pretty early on the store's first day.

My assumption -- maybe more accurately, my hope -- is that the signage on this store is not finished. I have to assume a large ShopRite sign is going to go onto this part of the facade, but who knows -- as far as I know, the Wayne ShopRite has yet to receive any more signage than it had at the time of my visit. That store and this one are both owned by Inserra Supermarkets, one of the larger Wakefern members and the one with the most stores in the Bergen/Passaic county area.

While this store is not too different from Wayne, there is a new decor package inside. This store is not too different from Wayne in setup (although it's a mirror image), and about 10,000 square feet smaller, roughly 70,000 square feet compared to Wayne's 80,000.

We enter to the grand aisle on the left side of the store. Floral, a small cafe, and sushi are on the front wall, with prepared foods and deli on the left side wall and bakery at the back with produce in the middle of the grand aisle. Meat and seafood are on the back wall with dairy/frozen on the far right side of the store. Like Wayne, there's no pharmacy here.

As you can see from this wide-angle lens shot, the store is very spacious, which is good since the old one was so cramped. This is an enormous improvement over the old store, but I must say it didn't strike me as an exceptional store. A good one for sure, but the fresh departments all felt rather abbreviated and run-of-the-mill, even compared to a store like Wayne.

The produce department is very nicely set up, though, and the produce looked excellent. I guess that's to be expected, though, for opening day.

I assume this goes without saying, but there are no secondhand fixtures here. Everything we see is brand-new.

In the front, we have a very small cafe and a sushi station, and the rest of the prepared foods extend behind the sushi. The cafe feels like an afterthought, so I'm assuming they're not counting on a lot of use. (It's quite large in Wayne.) There's also not a whole lot of prepared foods here, beyond a small hot food bar and some grab-and-go sandwiches, plus sushi of course.

Here's a look at the prepared foods area. Nice, but again, somewhat minimal.

The deli is up next. I really like these fixtures, and the decor is quite attractive. But again we see limited fresh selections. There's no salad bar, for instance, and the olive bar is condensed down to just one endcap with pre-packaged selections...

Up on the front wall, we have the customer service counter and the dietitian's office, and as I mentioned, this store doesn't have a pharmacy. Inserra no longer has any pharmacies in their stores.

Going back to the rear of the store, we move on to the bakery department. The bakery was quite nice and, along with produce, maybe the best fresh department in the store. It's certainly better than, say, Stop & Shop's bakery departments but again, not outstanding.

But it is pretty extensive, and as I commented on in the post for Wayne, Inserra has greatly improved their bakery program in the last few years. This store's bakery is way better than some of the older Inserra stores, such as Hackensack or Columbia Park.

The seafood counter was very nice but again, small. Some of the more deluxe features going into newer Inserra stores, such as the extensive seafood counter at Wyckoff, are not present here and this is a fairly average seafood department.

The grocery aisles are also pretty standard, if very sleek and orderly. The selection, of course, is enormous. The only other notable thing to mention here is that, like many of the newer ShopRites, this store uses digital shelf tags.

You'll notice there's none of the traditional sale tags hanging down below the shelves here.

Heading back to the back wall, we move from seafood into the meat department. There's a small service butcher counter between frozen seafood and packaged meats, right behind the free samples. (I went to the store's grand opening and all I got was a little sample of sausage, a mozzarella stick, a sample of a protein bar, and a bottle of water. I was expecting big giveaways like free ShopRite or Inserra merch! I was grateful for the bottle of water, though. Stay hydrated, kids.)

The meat department did look quite nice and I would say that Inserra might run generally better meat departments than other Wakefern operators like Village.

Here's a look at the aisle markers. Notice something very important here which is also true around the store -- the ShopRite name appears almost nowhere inside the store. On every aisle marker and nearly every department sign, the store is referred to as Inserra Supermarkets Fair Lawn. This is something I've commented on before, in West Milford and others. Village is doing the same, too, even to the point that some of the labels for store-made items say VSM or Village Super Market rather than ShopRite of ___. This store, though, actually had bags that said Inserra Supermarkets instead of ShopRite, something I've never seen before. What do members get out of emphasizing their names over ShopRite? Is it mostly to emphasize that the stores are independently owned? Or is it more of an attempt to establish their own brand outside of the ShopRite name in case they ever go off on their own, like Supermarkets General did in 1968 (which later became Pathmark)?

I mean, it's unlikely Inserra or Village will split from Wakefern anytime in the near future, but I've wondered more than once why they especially promote their names so heavily in their stores compared to the ShopRite name.

Something I can't say I've ever seen before but I love -- check out this shelving for the cat food! Food in cans underneath, treats in bags hanging from pegs above! So much more organized than the usual mess of everything stuck on shelves.

And a beautiful HABA department with the lit shelving we've seen in all the newer Wakefern stores.

I do find this store rather bland, though, and even when there is an attempt to add some character like with these "doors" on the wall, it's very small and doesn't really add much.

Frozen foods are in the second-to-last aisle, as well as an alcove in the front.

Here's a look down the dairy aisle at the far right side of the store. There are 22 aisles total here.

Even every category marker says Inserra, not ShopRite...

Here's a look across the expansive front-end. Note the large number of self-checkouts and the multiple self-checkouts for larger orders.

And, of course, the traditional checkouts beyond that.

But once again, every directional sign in the store has the Inserra Supermarkets Fair Lawn logo on it, not anything to do with ShopRite.

And here's a look at the mural in the foyer before we head out, which is very attractive and again branded Inserra...

That's all for this ShopRite, and while I'm really glad I was here on Day 1 and I was impressed, I can't say I was blown away. Great center store, frozen, and dairy for sure, meat and produce were really good, bakery was good, but deli and prepared foods were really uninspiring. But the store is quite nice and a huge step up from both the Pathmark that closed here in 2015, and the old ShopRite not far away. Speaking of that, here's a quick update of what that store looks like following its closure! We have a few more quick updates tomorrow on The Independent Edition, so stay tuned!