Update: Shop Fresh Marketplace - Hackettstown, NJ

Shop Fresh Marketplace
Owner: Nick Nasser

Opened: March 3, 2023

Cooperative: Great Valu Markets
Location: 7 Naughright Rd, Hackettstown, NJ

Photographed: June 13, 2023

We return to Shop Fresh Marketplace of Hackettstown, which opened in March in a former A&P on route 46 just outside of the town. In fact, I attended the soft opening on its first day in business, March 3rd. An official ribbon-cutting was later held on April 1st. I returned to the store on June 13th to find the store well on its way to going out of business. Think I'm exaggerating? I was one of two customers in the store and found the shelves mostly empty...

While the store is still very attractive, it is also clearly soon to close. Social media posts as far back as late April show shelves beginning to empty out, and clearly that process has only continued. Most of the service departments have closed, too, leaving only the deli in operation. All the prepared foods are gone...

...and although the service deli counter is still operational, it was pretty light on stock and the packaged deli items next to the service counter were almost gone completely too.

The cheese counter was all but gone too, with the low refrigerator under the signage empty and the island almost completely empty.

And there was absolutely nothing left in the bakery department, nor the seafood department (which apparently closed, according to reviews online, in early May -- just about a month after the official grand opening).

So let's discuss timeline here. The store opened for business on March 3rd, and it wasn't quite fully stocked as I documented in my opening coverage. It appears to have been fully stocked for the grand opening on April 1st, but by early May, stock was already starting to thin out (like with the seafood department). Since this store seems to have been fairly low-volume, even in its early days, the stock didn't sell that fast, and that means for the store to have reached this point just a little over three months after its opening, management must have stopped ordering certain categories a month or so prior. Now let's add to that, at least in my experience ordering from UNFI (which supplies this store) at my previous job, they typically require 14-day notice for orders. That means ordering must have stopped, at least for some things, around 2 weeks after the grand opening. Now, if you know your new business is so low-volume after 6 weeks of business that you're going to stop ordering, wouldn't you also know that at 4 weeks in so you could skip the grand opening (since it's terrible optics to hold a grand opening and then close so shortly thereafter)? Or did they truly think that the grand opening would drawn enough people to the store in that short time?

While the hardware and nonfoods departments were better stocked than the other departments, they, too were starting to thin out.

But shelf-stable groceries were clearly coming down to the end.

A commenter on my post about Nasser's previous store, Highland's Market by Shopwell, theorized that "the owner is not paying his bills and the suppliers are cutting him off." While obviously I have no idea whether that's the case here, I don't have any other convincing theories of how the store could deteriorate so drastically, so quickly.

There's still meat, but barely any. I could count the number of chicken packages on my fingers.

And unfortunately, it's the same situation in the dairy department.

I have to imagine the cooperative that represents this store, Great Valu Markets, is not thrilled with this store's condition, if they monitor such things. An interesting note is that this store's owner, Nick Nasser, has jumped around from one cooperative to another over his 10-year time as a supermarket owner. South Amboy was opened as a Key Food in 2013 (note that that article mentions Nasser's Staten Island store, but I don't know where it was or when it operated) and then was abruptly changed to CTown in 2014 before burning down in 2015; Elizabeth was announced as a Key Food, then a Foodtown, and opened as Supermarkets Plus affiliated with IGA in 2015 and closed in 2017; Middlesex was announced as a Foodtown, then a Supermarkets Plus IGA, then opened as an independent Price Saver Fresh Marketplace and was in business April to September 2019. West Milford was Highland's Market by Shopwell, affiliated with ASG and open from October 2020 to April 2022; then this store was announced as a Shopwell and opened as Shop Fresh affiliated with Great Valu. When Middlesex closed, the LLC that owned it filed for bankruptcy, and ultimately, the property was sold to a SuperFresh owner that is now preparing to open the store as a SuperFresh.

Will some other tenant be interested in this space when Shop Fresh closes? ALDI, LIDL, and Grocery Outlet have all been interested in New Jersey expansion lately, and there's none of the above in this immediate area. It's always possible a Key Food or ASG operator (or some other similar store) could venture out here to western NJ, but I think that's not particularly likely. And I assume that, because the store was vacant for so long (2015-2023), the obvious choices like ShopRite, Stop & Shop, ACME, and Weis are not interested.

And of course, there's no bread on the shelves either, hardly. This store's very very short tenure would suggest a poor location or the wrong pricing, but in the context of the owner's prior failures, I think the problem is not the store but the operator. But we'll see how this plays out over time. Don't forget to see today's other reports, on upcoming Food Depot Supermarkets in Belleville and East Orange!