TOUR: Weis Markets - Duryea, PA

Weis Markets
Opened: 2008
Previous Tenants: Mr. Z's (early 1990s-2008)
Location: 70 Phoenix St, Duryea, PA
Photographed: December 22, 2018 and August 12, 2020

The Weis Markets in Duryea is a bit of a strange store, located somewhat outside of town across railroad tracks from the main street. It's only barely visible from Main Street, but the 40,000 square foot store has been going strong for around 30 years, first as a Mr. Z's (likely built after Weis purchased Mr. Z's, or else renovated very shortly after opening), and then from 2008 to the present, as a Weis.

A quick nighttime drive-by shot from 2018. The rest of the pictures are from the summer of 2020.

We enter to the grand aisle on the right side of the store. Pharmacy is in the front right corner with deli and seafood in an island opposite produce. Bakery and meat are on the back wall, with grocery aisles behind the deli/seafood island and dairy on the far left side of the store.

And I needed to get to this store because it was one of the very, very few Weis locations still featuring the 1990s neon decor! Weis has been remodeling so many of its stores, including this one, unfortunately. 

I knew when I visited this store that this decor wasn't long for this world, sadly. But I'm glad I got to photograph it before it was removed! It was looking really good (if extremely dated) when I visited, except for a few small places where it was beginning to deteriorate.

One example of that is the "seaf od" counter.

Although Duryea is about equidistant between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton -- two rather large cities -- it itself is a small town with around 5000 people and only one supermarket. There's a Redner's and an ALDI about two miles south in Pittston, and a Gerrity's around three miles west in West Pittston.

There's also a very small independent butcher/deli type grocer in Duryea, Komensky's Market, along with Sabatelle's in Pittston which I mentioned on Friday's post.

And despite Duryea's location, it really feels like a countryside small town.

Once we get out of the grand aisle, this store isn't all that exciting, although it seemed plenty clean, and like it would be a perfectly pleasant place to shop. The decor outside of the grand aisle is less exciting, too...

We can see that some of the freezers have been replaced, likely in place of a row of coffin cases in the middle of the frozen foods.

Notice too that frozen foods go up the middle of the store, in aisles 6-7 with 15 aisles in total.

As far as I know, though, the store was not expanded at any point. I'm not sure about that, but I don't see any clear evidence of that.

Meats are mostly all the way in the back left corner of the store, with dairy running down the last grocery aisle.

And then we move into snacks and crackers on the front wall, with the registers beyond that. I believe the customer service counter is between deli and the front-end in the island. This directs all traffic through the grand aisle and then into the supermarket from the back walkway. I'm not sure if they've kept that layout after the renovation.

On the front end, too, we can see a mixture of older things like the decor and newer things like the lane markers.

Interstate 476 roughly splits the Wyoming Valley in half, with the Wilkes-Barre area to the south and the Scranton area to the north. We've seen all the stores we're going to see south of 476, and tomorrow, we'll be taking a look at what's coming up on the other side of 476! Stay tuned!