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Special Report: Food Bazaar Supermarket - Piscataway, NJ

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By Zachary

Food Bazaar Supermarket
Opened: October 18, 2024
Owner: Spencer An
Previous Tenants: Edwards > Stop & Shop
Cooperative: none
Location: 581 Stelton Rd, Piscataway, NJ
Photographed: October 19, 2024
A very last-minute addition to today's posts! Welcome to the Piscataway Food Bazaar, which opened on Friday. It's been converted from Stop & Shop in the same process as the others Food Bazaar acquired (Coney Island, Hempstead, and Carlstadt). Stop & Shop closed at 3pm on Thursday, then the flurry of activity descended upon the store (it was very entertaining to see Google Maps list the Stop & Shop as "busier than usual" on Thursday evening). And Food Bazaar was open at 7am Friday. I visited late yesterday afternoon.
The roughly 65,000 square foot store was constructed in the late 1990s as an Edwards, then Ahold's New York City-area chain. In 2001, all the Edwards became Stop & Shops, and the store got a partial renovation then. Stop & Shop didn't really touch it since then, and Food Bazaar has begun what I can only assume will be a very complete renovation. The store is pretty rundown these days, but I'm sure it'll be freshened up quite a bit. As we'll see, Food Bazaar did manage to get some basics done overnight, but I'm sure there's much more to come. Here's our most recent visit to the Stop & Shop, by the way.
Of course, the layout hasn't really been changed much, but there are a few minor changes. The produce fixtures, for instance, are new. And we can see some work obviously being done at the time of my visit, and other things that need fixing (including one of the letters on the brand-new welcome sign). I'm confident everything will be fixed up soon enough. For comparison, here's a fully-renovated Food Bazaar in a former Stop & Shop.
Edwards decor remains on the walls -- for now. Give it a couple more weeks and I'm pretty sure it'll all be gone. Food Bazaar was quicker to remove the decor in Coney Island and Carlstadt than this store and Hempstead. That makes sense, because both had fairly prominent Stop & Shop logos while Hempstead is completely brand-less inside and this one only had a few very small logos, making it much easier to leave old decor in place.
I don't know whether Food Bazaar will replace the refrigerators here but it definitely seems like there are fewer linear feet of refrigerated produce here (and Carlstadt) compared to a purpose-built Food Bazaar, but of course not having those measurements I don't know for sure.
The deli, like Carlstadt, had only Thumann's and Dietz & Watson, no Boar's Head in sight here which is unusual for New Jersey (and Food Bazaar, given that only these two omit Boar's Head). As you can see, the deli cases here -- like the rest of the fixtures -- are definitely aging and will probably need to be replaced over time.
Like Carlstadt, too, Food Bazaar has this new line of prepared dinners, and it's quite extensive. I don't know whether it's made its way into any of the other stores, but as of the last few weeks, it wasn't in Coney Island or North Bergen.
Some of the prepared foods are heat-and-eat, some are cold salads and the like, and others are ready-to-cook entrees. Like Carlstadt, this store also has a selection of prepared seafood items in the seafood department. That's definitely a page straight out of the Wegmans playbook -- even, I believe, literally int the same takeout-type containers. And the olive bar is fully stocked, or as this kind of silly new sign says, the Mediterranean O'Love Bar. (I have to assume that's something Food Bazaar brought in, right? It doesn't look like anything they use but I've also never seen one in a Stop & Shop.)
Food Bazaar, as we'll see, might be reopening the large and long-unused prepared foods department here. Stop & Shop had put some shelving in front of the closed prepared foods cases, but Food Bazaar was adding a few things back.
It also looks like Food Bazaar has removed Stop & Shop's dedicated natural foods department in aisle 1. (They seemed to be keeping it in Carlstadt, at least for now.) The aisle markers are new.
Here you can see the prepared foods department, partially stocked at least. They seem to be using the pizza ovens for the first time in years, as there were a few pizzas out you could get by the slice.
The grocery aisles, I would estimate, were about 2/3 or 3/4 stocked. This transition felt a bit more hectic than Carlstadt but a little smoother than Coney Island. This store is also the largest of all of them, coming in at 20,000 square feet larger than Coney Island and 10,000 more than Carlstadt. Coram is about this size, and it looks like that'll be opening as a Food Bazaar in another two weeks. As far as I know, that's the last Stop & Shop-to-Food Bazaar conversion.
Perhaps most impressively, overnight Food Bazaar also reopened the seafood department, which had been closed and replaced with freezers under Stop & Shop. Some of the freezers remain, with the refrigerator case moved over to the left for packaged fish fillets. The service counter displayed whole fish and shellfish.
You can see that the store's bones are alright, but it's going to need a lot of cosmetic work. My guess is the flooring will be the first thing to go, especially given the poor condition it's in (you can see the holes and patches below).
No service butcher counter yet, but the meat room was up and running again.
And at least 3-4 aisles were being reset with international foods, which as usual Stop & Shop didn't really have here. Within a reasonable traveling distance from this store, you have customers looking for Latin, Caribbean, African, Indian, Korean, Chinese, and Italian foods, and it looks like -- judging by cases of products that I saw ready to go out -- Food Bazaar will be having a little of all of that.
Several aisles towards the end were completely closed off and not ready yet, presumably where more of the international foods will go. HABA will also probably be somewhere in this area, and much of this area was Stop & Shop's HABA and nonfoods aisles.
Note that this Food Bazaar has 21 aisles. For whatever reason, Stop & Shop's first aisle was labeled aisle 3.
Obviously, there's a lot more work that needs to be done here. I'll be back to check it out as it's being redone.
The perimeter seems to be pretty much ready to go, though.
And that includes frozen and dairy, which from a cursory check seemed to be fully stocked. I didn't shop at this store, just visited. I'll be back to shop once it's more settled -- which should be in about a week or two.
New, temporary Food Bazaar decor signage has been hung in front of the Edwards decor, which is quite an unusual sight.
Not particularly centered, but that's not important. These signs are just temporary.
I have to assume these freezers will be replaced, too. They need it.
An interesting note in the last aisle -- Stop & Shop had reduced the selection here, with one of the cases (just beyond the cold cuts case) filled with bottled water and random jugs of iced tea. Food Bazaar, at least for now, has fully stocked all of the dairy cases.
Another interesting shot with several generations of decor here, the Food Bazaar aisle markers going in, the Edwards decor, and the early-00s Stop & Shop lettering that was installed on top of the Edwards decor.
Again, Food Bazaar has hung temporary decor banners in front of the old Edwards signage. Can't say that dairy department isn't fully stocked!
And bakery is also fully stocked, although like we saw in Carlstadt many of the fresh-baked items were brought in from other stores (muffins, cookies, and a few other items were labeled with the Long Island City location, their flagship and second-largest location, at 75,000 square feet).
I'm sure in time, they will begin baking in-store here, just as they do in the other locations.
Stop & Shop's pharmacy sits vacant, though, as Food Bazaar doesn't run any pharmacies. I don't know what they'll do with this space eventually. They've also closed the entrance and exit door at this end of the store. Food Bazaar doesn't typically have more than one entrance/exit in their stores.
These aisles will give you an idea of the food that's soon to fill these shelves...
Edwards' front-end is still fully intact, though, right down to the registers! Incidentally, I'm pretty sure that one of the front-end supervisors training the new cashiers is from the Elizabeth location, since he looked pretty familiar.
Self checkouts aren't yet up and running.
Customer service is on the front wall beyond the registers.
A brief note: this store competes most directly with a beautiful, brand-new ShopRite just to the southeast, but other grocers are in the area, too. An ALDI and an Asian Food Markets are half a mile south, plus a new, as-yet unnamed grocer is moving into half of the closed Piscataway ShopRite. An Indian supermarket, Subzi Mandi, is about a mile and a half south. There's also a handful of other supermarkets within a short drive, including the new Tropical Supermarket in South Plainfield and the Meat City Market across the street in Piscataway. So there's no shortage of competition here, and we'll see how Food Bazaar competes with all of those alternatives.
That's all for the Piscataway Food Bazaar for now, and here's our other posts for the weekend!
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Comments

  1. BillyGrOctober 21, 2024 at 3:31 PM

    For the prepared items, if you are referring to the dishes that are gold color inside, black outside with plastic covers, Hannaford uses those as well.

    Maybe surprising that they never jumped the corporate line to S&S as well.

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