SuperFresh
Opened: September 20, 2024
Owner: Howard Lee
Previous Tenants: Pantry Pride (1970s) > Mayfair Foodtown (late 1970s-1995) > Edwards (1995-2001) > Stop & Shop (2001-2023)
Cooperative: Key Food Stores
Location: 424 Raritan Ave, Highland Park, NJ
Photographed: September 22, 2024
After talking a lot about
closing Stop & Shop stores (and don't worry, I have lots more posts on that subject to come), let's take a look at something different -- a brand-new store that's made its home in a former Stop & Shop!
This is the SuperFresh of Highland Park, located in the small suburban town of Highland Park just outside of New Brunswick. The store dates back to around 1970, replacing an older supermarket closer to the street. It's right around 25,000 square feet and hasn't been expanded since it opened when Mayfair Foodtown built it. Mayfair was acquired by Ahold-owned chain Edwards in the 1990s, then all Edwards were converted to Stop & Shop in 2001. Stop & Shop
then closed in March 2023. After
extensive renovations, SuperFresh opened up in this spot on September 20.
Let's head inside! Now if you look at
my pictures of the Stop & Shop, you can see this new store has absolutely nothing to do with the dingy, outdated Stop & Shop. It's an impressive amount of new stuff -- maybe too much, since the store feels a bit cramped, but that would be practically my only complaint. The space was stripped back to the studs, with a completely new interior built out (not bad given that SuperFresh only began their renovations in November 2023).
We enter to the grand aisle, with the bakery department immediately next to the entrance (this store, like most SuperFresh locations, doesn't bake in-store). Deli and more baked goods are in the front-left corner, and a kosher deli and kitchen is still coming soon there. Produce takes up most of the rest of the grand aisle, with a service butcher counter in the back-left corner and packaged meats on the back wall. Dairy and frozen are on the right side with service seafood in the front-right corner. A small floral department is between the entrance and exit doors on the front wall.
Highland Park has a large Orthodox Jewish population -- the only other grocer in town is a
kosher supermarket -- so it makes sense that SuperFresh would want to focus on kosher foods. In addition to the kosher deli and kitchen coming soon (since-removed job listings sought specific kosher cooks and a mashgiach, essentially a supervisor that keeps a kosher kitchen kosher), there's a case of kosher meats in the back, a substantial selection of kosher groceries in the first aisle, a dedicated kosher frozen foods department, and a dedicated kosher dairy section. Also packed into the diminutive store are Caribbean foods, Latin American foods, Italian foods, and foods representing several Asian countries.
An interesting slight change between the decor of Roselle and this store -- notice there's actually a slight bevel texture on the letters not present in
Roselle, which (re-)opened in early June.
Highland Park has a busy, pedestrian-centered downtown, and my guess is that not having a supermarket in town was a significant difficulty for the town. A friend of mine grew up right around the corner from this store and would walk regularly to Stop & Shop for lots of small grocery orders. But my observations, at least so far, are that people were definitely filling shopping carts. I've been back to Roselle quite a few times since it reopened, and there, too, a steady stream of traffic with people doing full orders seems to suggest this SuperFresh formula works. (Stores like
Hopelawn,
Linden, and especially
Belleville are always busy, but those are larger stores.)
The complete transformation of the produce department is stunning. Compare this to Stop & Shop's
tiny single-aisle produce department before the remodel.
I didn't notice any fixtures that had been left over from Stop & Shop, but given that most fixtures are crowded with stuff, it's possible. I didn't look too carefully at them.
And speaking of that, you can see in a picture like this just how much SuperFresh has packed into the small space.
A service butcher counter, which Stop & Shop didn't have, in the back-left corner.
Check out the cleaver stuck into the wall! And you can see the kosher meat section here.
The expansion of the grand aisle, though, has come at a cost for the grocery aisles. SuperFresh has 9 aisles, including dairy and frozen; Stop & Shop had 11, and I'm not sure if that counts the first and second aisles (with meat and produce, respectively). SuperFresh also seems to have tightened the aisles, again probably to increase selection in the small store.
We're just across the river -- about a mile and a quarter -- from where a
different SuperFresh failed several years ago in an urban location right on Rutgers' New Brunswick campus. That location, though, was under different ownership (and that owner, Kevin Kim, currently has locations in
Bloomfield,
Clifton, and
Passaic).
As you can see, the grocery aisles are narrow but packed with selection, meaning the store has as much to choose from as a much larger store -- although, of course, not nearly as much as the
nearby ShopRite might have.
Other than Glatt 27, SuperFresh doesn't have any competition in Highland Park, and its proximity to supermarket-light downtown New Brunswick will likely mean many people there -- including Rutgers students -- will come to shop here. But New Brunswick does have small
CTown and
Bravo stores, and just across the border in Edison,
H Mart and
99 Ranch serve a large Asian population. A Philadelphia-based Asian supermarket, Asianfresh, is also preparing to open in the former Sam Ash music store right across from H Mart -- a building that, itself, was
originally a Grand Union.
I appreciate the store's high ceilings.
This store has a slightly larger-than-average HABA and nonfoods selection for a SuperFresh of this size, possibly because there are fewer shopping options in the area, although there is a Rite Aid a block away.
Milk in the back-right corner...
The freezers are definitely all new...
Dairy lines the last aisle, but it was
previously on the back wall of the store.
SuperFresh has added a large service seafood counter, which
Stop & Shop didn't have (but I suspect they had one that was eventually removed).
This corner is where Stop & Shop had their deli and bakery, although they didn't have an in-store bakery either. Customer service is between the seafood department and the registers here on the front wall, facing the registers.
You can see that the store was quite crowded when I visited, but I was there last Sunday (and the store opened two days prior).
To their credit, though, every register was open along with several clerks at customer service, so there wasn't much of a wait.
Here's what this area looked like when Stop & Shop was in the building.
And that wraps up our look at the beautiful new Highland Park SuperFresh! It seemed to me to be a store that fits well into the area and has a lot more to offer than Stop & Shop did, although we'll see how the selection and services might be revised over time. But for now, it's a big improvement and I'm glad to see a supermarket returning to downtown Highland Park! Today's other post is the Foodtown in Astoria, which is closing shortly and
you can see it here.
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