Corrado's Market
Opened: 1976
Owner: James Corrado
It's time to return to the Corrado's Market in Clifton, and unfortunately the store is looking much worse than it did the last time I visited. (You can also see pictures of the store in better times there.) This is the final remaining store, as locations in Denville, North Arlington, Wayne, and Fairfield have closed, plus a planned store in Brick was canceled. There's a redevelopment project pending here, but I don't know what the status of that is. There's no visible sign of ongoing construction work, except...
...this stop work order which greets customers as they enter. (Apparently they were doing construction work without a permit, and while I'm not sure exactly which part of the store this is referring to, there's some work being done in the front corner that we'll see.)
The store is very noticeably in worse shape than it was the last time I was here. At least then, the terrible produce was abundant. Now, it's hit or miss but also very sparse. (It's an almost mind-boggling decline from what this store looked like, say, 15 years ago. Or heck, even six years ago. Yelp has lots of great pictures of the store in its prime.) And I'm obviously not the only person to notice the change. Commenters on Reddit chalk it up to a combination of increased and improved competition -- most locally, Brothers Produce around the corner, which gets absurdly packed at peak shopping times -- and poor management.
I mentioned the last time that I don't even know who's supplying Corrado's with the random assortment of items left on the shelves. For a long time, they were independent and self-distributed, before joining Key Food around 2017 or 2018, so they were supplied by C&S via Key Food. Then they left Key Food and joined Associated Supermarket Group in 2019, which is also supplied by C&S. By around 2021, they'd also left ASG. When I visited last time, there were some Parade items on the shelves from General Trading in Carlstadt, NJ, but those seem to be (mostly) gone now, too. But what's abundant, at least in this case that previously held cut produce, is this odd selection of packaged, premade sandwiches and salads. This is the type of thing you might find at an airport, and were made and packaged by a distributor that primarily does that kind of thing. They all looked fine (not expired), but I don't know how or why they ended up here.
And as for the rest of the dairy department?
Sure it is. Apparently these signs have been up since at least last August.
I wondered last time how they were selling enough meat to keep the shelves stocked. Well, here's the answer: they're not. They've cut the meat department back to just part of the outside wall area here, with some dairy in the front part. The islands are completely empty.
So is this freezer case between the World of Cheese (which is also mostly empty) and the grocery aisles, which still had some stock in them.
Deli and some seafood still open, but that's about it. This feels a lot like Ashley Marketplace, down in South Orange, another once-great store now obviously preparing to go out of business. With that one, too, it's hard to say exactly why.
A look across the now-desolate front-end, with the former pizzeria and later floral department closed off with tarps. Presumably, that's the area where construction was beginning without a permit.
You can see into this section from the exit, and it's clear work is ongoing here (or at least it was). It's hard to tell what the work involved was intended to be, though, and it's also hard to tell what the big-picture goal is with this location -- if there even is one. And I don't quite understand why the store is even still open, because as you can see from my pictures really there wasn't anybody shopping here.
Previous Tenants: Good Deal
Cooperative: none
Location: 1578 Main Ave, Clifton, NJ
Photographed: February 20, 2025
It's a shame to see such a once-great business dying such a slow and painful death. We'll see if anything more happens with this store, but I have to assume the end is near. Meanwhile, there's a lot more (less depressing) things to see this weekend!
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