TOUR: ShopRite - Vernon, CT

ShopRite of Tri-City Plaza

Owner: Rich Cohen

Opened: 2020

Previous Tenants: Ames > Price Chopper (2004-2019)

Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.

Location: 35 Talcottville Rd, Vernon, CT

Photographed: November 21, 2021

Welcome to Vernon, Connecticut! The town of 30,000 people is about 10 miles outside Hartford and home to two Stop & Shops, an ALDI, and this ShopRite. This store opened in 2020 in part of a former Price Chopper (which itself was originally an Ames). The Price Chopper was a behemoth of a store at over 100,000 square feet, and the ShopRite is significantly smaller (but still quite large) at 75,000 square feet. They took the right 3/4 of the store, and the left 1/4 is now a Home Sense.

The store is owned by the Cohen family, which also owns two other Connecticut ShopRites under their company Waverly Markets, in Manchester and East Hartford. The store reopened in early 2020, just days before the major coronavirus shutdowns started.

While Waverly has kept the majority of Price Chopper's layout intact, they've updated all of the decor and fixtures, making it feel like a modern supermarket. It definitely has some Price Chopper flair, though. In fact, it feels a bit like the store was just chopped off on the left side because, well, it was.

We enter to the grand aisle, which takes up a significant amount of the right side of the store. Produce is on the inside, with the grocery aisles to the left of it, and prepared foods, bakery, and deli are on the right side from front to back. Seafood and meat are on the back wall, with pharmacy in an island facing the front-end at the front of the first aisle and dairy/frozen on the far left side of the store. Let's check it out!

I love the decor here, and we'll see some great signage around the store. I think the flooring is also a really nice pairing with the decor.

In the below picture, we're looking across the front of the produce department over towards the right-side wall of the store. The entrance is just behind the greeting cards we can see on the right.

The Price Chopper would've looked like this, thanks to some photos from the store right before it closed posted to Flickr by Preserving Retail & More.

As we see, the layout is roughly the same as Price Chopper's -- other than the store being reduced in size, I don't think any walls were moved -- but the decor is fresh and modern-looking.

Or, in some cases, appropriately retro! This is where Price Chopper had their seating area, too.

And the bathrooms haven't moved, either. I got to be very familiar with Price Chopper living in central MA for a while and my local store was set up like this one.

ShopRite has a fully-stocked prepared foods counter, though. Price Chopper has a tendency to let them languish with no food.

Up next on the right-side wall is Sugar and Spice, the bakery department. And it is a particularly good bakery department, with especially good bread, rolls, and bagels.

Deli is in the back right corner of the store. In most PC stores I'm familiar with, the locations of deli and bakery are switched but we can tell from the 2019 pictures that Price Chopper had their deli in the same spot as ShopRite.

Looking back up towards the front of the store...

The seafood and meat departments are on the back wall. Same setup that Price Chopper had, just very significantly modernized...

Waverly has also brought in some other new products and offerings, such as halal meats.

Heading into the grocery aisles, we find them set up similarly to Price Chopper, but with new shelving and flooring.

Because the store was reduced in size, ShopRite also made the grand aisle smaller. The rear half of the grand aisle now has a few shorter grocery aisles (between bakery and meat/seafood) where Price Chopper wouldn't have had any. Here we're looking at the candy wall, with produce on the other side (you can see the bakery department to the far left below).

Price Chopper always used the lower ceiling around the perimeter, which we can see below.

Now the grocery aisles lead us into the pharmacy, which is between produce and the grocery aisles facing the front-end.

HABA shelving is opposite the pharmacy counter. Once again, this is exactly where Price Chopper would've had their pharmacy, but Waverly has tightened everything up around here so that there's less dead space -- a problem I see in a lot of Price Choppers.

The aisles are split beyond the pharmacy, with HABA and nonfoods in the front half and the rest of the grocery department in the back.

Frozen foods are on the far left side of the store. This is the one area of the store that I'm not totally sure how Price Chopper set it up.

But as we can tell, all of the fixtures as well as the flooring and lighting are brand-new.

Back on the rear wall, we have the meat department. I don't believe this store has a service butcher.

Dairy is in the back left corner and continues down the back half of the last aisle.

This decor is particularly attractive, in my opinion! I'm a sucker for good lighting and wood.

Looking back across the supermarket towards the pharmacy area...

The one part of the store that I didn't love is the front half of the last aisle. As we can see here, there's no decor whatsoever and it felt dead. Why isn't there some signage for bread here?

And now for a look across the front-end...

That wraps up our tour of the Vernon ShopRite, and I would say that it is an exceptionally good reuse of a former Price Chopper!

We won't be seeing much here in Tolland County, but we will be making a quick stop on Monday in the little town of Tolland itself!