Special Report: Food Bazaar Supermarket - Carlstadt, NJ

Food Bazaar Supermarket

Opened: October 4, 2024

Owner: Spencer An

Previous Tenants: Grand Union > Stop & Shop

Cooperative: none

Location: 675 Paterson Ave, Carlstadt, NJ

Photographed: October 4, 2024

Today's third Stop & Shop post (along with Newton and Jackson) is a store that's both already closed and already reopened with a new operator. For a little background, the 55,000 square foot Carlstadt Stop & Shop was built on the site of a demolished Grand Union warehouse, and the store briefly operated as a Grand Union before that chain went under and it became a Stop & Shop. It was among the 32 stores Stop & Shop is closing this fall, and along with three others was taken over immediately by Queens-based Food Bazaar, marking their 6th store in New Jersey and 36th overall. Food Bazaar is converting one store every two weeks, with Coney Island being their first on September 6, Hempstead on September 20, Carlstadt on October 4, and Piscataway up next on October 18.

I visited Coney Island the morning it opened to find a chaotic but impressive transition process. Carlstadt similarly had just 16 hours to convert to Food Bazaar -- Stop & Shop closed at 3:00 pm on Thursday and Food Bazaar opened at 7:00 am on Friday -- and it seems like the transition was significantly less chaotic here, making it to me much more impressive. (There was still plenty of chaos, but the store was functional enough that I did my weekly food shopping here and only had a few random items that I couldn't find.) That being said, since this is decidedly not the usual location of a Food Bazaar -- Carlstadt is a middle-class suburb, not an urban inner-city location -- what will determine whether this store succeeds is whether Food Bazaar can create an impressive store, not just an impressive store considering they only had overnight to convert it.

This supermarket is practically next door to (four blocks) an Inserra ShopRite that's exceptionally good -- I would say one of the best Inserra-owned stores -- and about 15,000 square feet larger. It appears to be extremely high-volume. So Food Bazaar has their work cut out for them here, and I'm not sure the conversions have been received particularly well so far. I've seen decidedly mixed feedback on social media and elsewhere, many people noting higher prices than Stop & Shop and the condition of the stores. Of course, the stores are all set for renovation, but that will be ongoing while they remain open. I think if the stores are closed for a while for a full renovation, people will judge a new store more on its own terms rather than as a replacement for the previous operator. On the other hand, if the store is closed for an extended period of time, you give customers the chance to form other habits of shopping elsewhere, so it's hard either way.

I think Food Bazaar has built a solid foundation here but the store definitely -- like all the other ones they're acquiring -- needs a lot of work. It's immediately noticeable upon entering that the grand aisle is strangely dim, for instance. That was true when it was a Stop & Shop, too.

Let's for a moment appreciate what Food Bazaar did here: overnight, they not only got the entire store up and running including stocking the entire perimeter (as we'll see, the grocery aisles were only mostly stocked) and opening all the service departments, but they actually replaced the produce cases and most impressively, took down all the Stop & Shop signage and put up new temporary department signage.

You can see an example of that above, with the usual Deli & Hot Food sign simply printed on a banner and hung above the deli counter. And while, as I said, this store will require a different approach from Food Bazaar's other locations, it's clear they're willing to try it. Here in the deli department, they've added a line of prepared dinners to heat up. This is something that I first saw at Wegmans (with the Gold Pan meals) and variations have made their way into other stores like ShopRite and ACME. This is my first time seeing it in a Food Bazaar, and they have some here in the deli department and seafood entrees in the seafood department.

The store is still clearly very much in transition, but when I visited around 4pm on Friday, there was a steady stream of customers in and out. I eavesdropped as much as I could, and reactions were all over the place. One woman tried a sample of a slice of deli-sliced turkey and said "yuck." Another guy, walking around the produce department, turned to the woman he was with and said, "wow, we're gonna have to start shopping here instead of Wegmans."

Something unusual about the deli: for whatever reason, there were no Boar's Head products. Instead, they had Dietz & Watson and Thumann's. I don't know if that's just for this store or a chainwide switch, but every Food Bazaar I've ever shopped in has had Boar's Head deli items. That includes Coney Island and a store in Queens I was in on Thursday. Stop & Shop carried Boar's Head.

As you can see, the temporary department signage is not a permanent fix. It's barely visible from most angles, partially because it's hung very high and the ceiling is high here.

This alcove in the back of the grand aisle has cheese, some more prepared foods, and an olive bar, which is left over from Stop & Shop.

Food Bazaar has installed their usual produce tables here, and the black mats are covering where Stop & Shop's produce fixtures were.

Here's a look at the produce department before the switch.

Remember that, a day and a half before I took these pictures, this was operating as a Stop & Shop with nothing on the shelves. It's pretty impressive that Food Bazaar managed to get the store set up in that time, but like I said, the long-term success is going to depend on whether they can run the store better than Stop & Shop did. I'm pretty sure they'll be able to, but it's going to take quite a bit of work. And the quick transition was not without problems: there were two signs added on top of this refrigerator cases for organic produce, with none below the signs. Things like that I'm sure they'll fix in time, and they're relatively minor if they keep the store clean and stocked with good, fresh stuff.

The bakery department was practically overflowing with fresh baked goods, but the actual in-store bakery hadn't been opened yet (when I was there, a bakery manager was training several bakers in the prep area). So how did they do it?

If you read the labels, the baked goods were brought in from other stores. Muffins, croissants, cookies, and other normally store-made items came from other Food Bazaars in Douglaston (like these), North Bergen, Red Hook, and others that I spotted on the labels. You don't have to look beyond those stores (or other Food Bazaar locations I've posted) to gather that they'll probably do quite a bit of renovation to these acquired Stop & Shop stores. It's already begun at Coney Island, at least with some minor work so far.

Because the in-store bakery wasn't functional yet, everything here was brought in from outside vendors. I assume over time more of this will be done in-store.

Seafood and meat on the back wall.

And Food Bazaar appears to be keeping, at least for now, the natural foods department in the first aisle. The refrigerator case here was being stocked with vegan and vegetarian items, the frozen foods cases were almost fully stocked, and the grocery shelving was somewhat full.

Over at the seafood department, they've filled the existing Stop & Shop case but added another case in front of it for whole fish and shellfish.

And although there's no service butcher counter (yet?), the meat room is definitely back up and running. There were several butchers in this window and the majority of meat seems to be cut in-store.

Because this store isn't that old -- it was built around 2000 and renovated around 2010 -- my guess is the renovations will be mostly cosmetic. It's possible they'll replace some fixtures, and I wouldn't be surprised if the meat and seafood departments are expanded (heck, they could even move floral to the former pharmacy, move the bakery to the floral department in the front-right corner, move seafood into the former bakery, and expand meat into both the meat and seafood departments).

Although the perimeter (including dairy and frozen) was fully stocked, the grocery aisles... not so much. The first aisle is the natural foods aisle, then the second aisle here is soon to become an international aisle (with Polish and Asian foods). The little bit of stock on the left side appears to be the last remnants of Stop & Shop's Polish foods. The rest of the aisles are mostly stocked, with a few exceptions -- but they will probably be reset again soon, as most of the categories still don't have storebrands out yet. Food Bazaar has condensed HABA down from two aisles to half of one aisle, and the former HABA department was still being stocked with Latin American foods.

Much of the shelf-stable stock seems to have been left over from Stop & Shop, but there were also plenty of new items that had been put out. All of the Stop & Shop branded items are gone, of course.

So most aisles were reasonably well-stocked, but didn't have the full variety that a normal Food Bazaar would have.

But in some aisles, it's hard to tell it had just closed the day before as a previous supermarket.

The pet food aisle appeared to be fully stocked, but it seems like that's because Food Bazaar has shrunk the selection a bit, probably to make way for something else.

So part of the aisle was completely empty, probably awaiting some new category to be put here...

Food Bazaar doesn't operate any pharmacies (an independent pharmacy rents space inside the Trenton location) so the pharmacy has been temporarily covered over with lots and lots of paper towels.

Here's the former HABA and nonfoods aisles (you can see the book and magazine shelving on the right) which were being prepared for international foods. Note the aisle makers, which were still being set up (in the back, a guy had a cart filled with just the category signs and he was going up on a ladder to add them to the right aisles).

In addition to mountains of stock, one of the former HABA aisles had some new shelving lined up ready to be put together, possibly to replace the magazine shelves.

But dairy and frozen were fully stocked.

Food Bazaar must have a pretty good relationship with their vendors (or, at least, be paying them a lot of money) to manage to get the stores set up this quickly. Within a few days, this will be a completely normal, fully functional supermarket. That's a really good turnaround time for a chain with under 50 locations.

Aisle markers are in but not every one has a number, as we see here. And the temporary department signage looks good, but definitely isn't a permanent fix.

Now a look across the front-end...

The self-checkouts had been installed (they appeared to be new machines), but they weren't functional yet. But they had more than enough registers open with a bagger at each, and you can't say either of those things about Stop & Shop.

So I'm interested to see what happens here, and it's great to see that this store remains a supermarket (by the way, this is the only grocery store in Carlstadt, although it's very close to multiple other stores because Carlstadt is quite small). And I'll be back as the renovation progresses! Meanwhile, here's our other stops this weekend...

• Stop & Shop's recently-closed store in Newton, MA
• ...and another recent closure, Jackson, NJ
• Wegmans is under construction at Lincoln Square
• Fast-growing chain Lincoln Market opens in Greenwich Village
• CTown prepares to move a block over in Canarsie, occupying a former Rite Aid