Stop & Shop
Opened: 2006
Previous Tenants: none
Location: 2145 Fairfield Ave, Bridgeport, CT
Photographed: December 11, 2023
Stop & Shop is from Massachusetts, but they've established themselves with a pretty significant presence in a few other states -- Connecticut and Rhode Island most notably, where they are the market leader. They have a significant presence in New York (especially Long Island) and New Jersey, too, though their forays into New Hampshire and Vermont were decidedly unsuccessful. While they're quite strong in Connecticut, there are a few places that they falter, and they really are not good at running stores in big cities. They've closed several New York City stores in the last few years, and most recently, announced they were closing one of their two Bridgeport stores. This one was built in 2006 and is expected to close by February 2024 -- the
other one in Bridgeport is older and was renovated and expanded in the 90s, but
hasn't been redone since -- and a third at 2600 Madison Ave north of downtown closed in 2012 and has
sat vacant since. Food Bazaar will be taking over this store by February, although it's not clear if they will close the store for the transition.
The store is around 55,000 square feet. I visited it a few weeks ago and although it wasn't set to close for some time, it was clear they'd already given up. Maintenance was nonexistent and the shelves were already starting to thin out.
The grand aisle is on the left side of the store, with bakery, deli, and seafood on the outside wall and produce opposite. Meat, beer, and dairy are on the back wall, with dairy and frozen on the right side. Floral is in the front-right corner. You can see clearly above just how many lights had burnt out and were not replaced. Big parts of the produce department were empty, and what was left looked pretty unappealing. I imagine they're just waiting for their time to run out.
Food Bazaar actually purchased the property in mid-November from a real estate investor from whom Stop & Shop was leasing. Presumably Stop & Shop's lease was soon to be up and Food Bazaar saw their opportunity. Food Bazaar has two other stores in Bridgeport,
both of which were recently renovated. Their Sylvan Avenue store, a former Shaw's, is around 2000 square feet larger than this one.
You can see, with the apples for instance, that Stop & Shop had apparently cut back on perishable stocking before they closed. The former salad and olive bar was covered with sheet pans, on top of which were a few bags of hamburger rolls. The deli counter was about half empty when I visited, covered with a decal promoting the app or something like that. I'm not sure if this store originally had a service seafood department, but it was long gone and replaced with freezers by the time I got here.
Here's the seafood department, which was only frozen and packaged things.
The butcher window, which used to be under the Something Special sign, was covered by what appears to be a large shade not unlike what you'd use for a window.
The grocery aisles had a very mainstream selection, although there did appear to be a few places where they were already cutting back even all the way back in December.
I do like the skylights, though! And these hanging signs are pretty nice.
This appears to have been at least a somewhat deluxe store originally, with features like this kitchen supply department. Clearly, that was reduced over time too, with most of it just filled with aluminum pans...
I assume Food Bazaar will do an extensive renovation here, and I assume this decor is not long for this world. The
other Stop & Shop they recently acquired has been undergoing a gradual remodel. That store only closed overnight for the transition.
I assume the low levels of stock we can see here were in preparation for the store closing, although I suppose it's possible this was just the standard of this store during Stop & Shop's tenure here. I mean, look at
this picture from February 2022.
On the back wall, much of the beer department had been filled with things that were definitely not beer...
And there's a large selection of general merchandise (candles, greeting cards, toys, books...) that I assume will all be eliminated immediately by Food Bazaar.
Frozen foods are on the right side of the store.
There's also a very sad little natural food department in the second-to-last aisle. It's not in the last aisle, where it typically is in Stop & Shops of this era -- although it may have been previously. There's a section for international frozen and dairy that probably originally was natural.
Here's a look across the back wall of the store, looking back towards the grand aisle.
And down the last aisle, with dairy on the outside wall. 19 aisles in total here. I would bet over time Food Bazaar will remove a couple aisles to expand the perimeter departments.
Here's where I assume natural frozen foods previously were, which has now been filled with international frozen foods.
It's possible this corner was originally a pharmacy or a natural food department, but
as of 2017, it had been kind of reduced to the not-much department it is now. Notice that at that time there was still natural food signage in the last aisle. It doesn't look like there ever was a pharmacy here.
A look across the front-end from this corner...
The floral department was definitely done for by the time I visited. There was hardly anything left, and the cases to the left were completely empty. Stop & Shop also closed the entrance we see here at some point, and funneled all traffic in and out of the opposite side doors.
Here's a look across the front-end.
You can be sure I'll do my best to get to the Food Bazaar once it opens, but for now, that's our look at the Stop & Shop right before it closes!
The design looks much like the (now Tops) store in Rhinebeck, NY, which was of a similar age (they had taken over an existing Grand Union there during bankruptcy, then built a new store on the site of a long empty former Jamesway).
ReplyDeleteThat store was one that got sold off when the parent company merged with Hannaford's parent company, as it was the only store there, but Hannaford was the only store in the next town north (Red Hook), thus it would have limited competition.
Also, in a way sort of lucky that Stop & Shop never did well or expanded much into VT, NH or ME (as I remember they did get one store not far into ME), or even into much of upstate NY, since that made the "merger" of the two companies much easier, with Hannaford having stores mostly in ME, VT and NH, plus the majority of their stores in NY in areas where there wasn't Stop & Shop, resulting in only those few sell offs in the Worcester area in MA and the handful, like Rhinebeck, in the Hudson Valley.
Ahold converted several high volume Giant-MD stores in more upscale neighborhoods to the format seen in this post. The stores were given the name Super Giant. Ahold touted the expanded perishable, fresh foods and general merchandise sections. Given what I have seen of the Giant-MD conversions, the seafood section in this store likely originally had a fish counter. It was probably removed due to slow sales. In the Giant-MD version of this format, the Something Special meat window was located on the back center wall of the store. Since all of the Super Giant locations I know of were conversions, the location of the new meat window lines up with the existing meat room. I don't recall any of the Super Giant locations having an actual service meat case, just the window where you could ask for special cuts, etc. Ahold is prepacking so much of their meat now that a service meat counter doesn't have much purpose. In recent Giant-MD remodels, Ahold has been moving the seafood service counter to line up with the existing meat room. There might be a few pre-pack meat choices in the case too. The stores near me had their old seafood area turned into online order fulfillment staging areas. The store format in this post is the nicest of the Stop and Shop/Giant-MD store designs in my opinion. It feels upscale enough to be different but not too far off the charts. I'd be disappointed if this was my regular shopping location. The Giant-MD locations in this format have all survived albeit with the current plain gray walls with fake wood grain department signs. Also, the layout of new Giant-MD locations is very heavily influenced by the design of this format. I will be interested to see what Food Bazaar does with the store. The pictures that have been posted of some of their other locations look pretty impressive.
ReplyDeleteThanks for telling us about the history of this store prototype!
DeleteI can definitely see how this was once a very upscale format. Of course, most of the Stop & Shops left with this decor and setup are on the old side because they haven't gotten renovations.
I would agree that there was probably originally a service seafood counter here, as it looks like there's a backroom setup for that too. I don't know that I've ever heard of a store converting a meat room to an online order section, but that makes sense actually!
Yes, we'll see how Food Bazaar does on this renovation, but I'm sure it'll be fairly extensive. I'll try to be back and check it out!
I've never seen this exact décor package before and find it pretty appealing as far as Stop & Shops go. Much bolder color scheme and the aisle makers are really cool. Looks like someone screwed up the installation of the "Something Special" sign. The underline is more of a strike-through on the first half!
ReplyDeleteAgreed, this is quite a nice decor package. This and the backlit colorful one from 2011-2016 are my two favorites:
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