The Independent Edition

  It's the Great Swamp, Charlie Brown! Tucked in between three highways (as so many things in New Jersey are) -- NJ-24 to the east, INT-287 to the west, and INT-78/US-22 to the south, the  Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge  is 7800 acres of protected land near the border of Morris, Union, and Somerset counties. And instead of grouping our next stores around a city, we're going to group them around the Great Swamp, which is just beautiful for hiking, by the way, along with the neighboring Lord Stirling Park in Basking Ridge and nearby Loantaka Brook Reservation in Morris Township. And if it feels like things have changed, they have -- we are out of the eastern part of the state, the congested Union, Essex, and Bergen/Passaic counties. We do have a tiny bit of Union left (New Providence and Berkeley Heights), but these are much more suburban towns bordering expansive green space. So for our next group, we're definitely in the suburbs, and as we continue north through the m

John's Meat Market Owner:  Vincent Losavio Opened:  1939 Cooperative:  none Location:  389 Park Ave, Scotch Plains, NJ Photographed:  July 2018 I'm not typically into photographing stores like butcher shops, but I couldn't resist this wonderful store in downtown Scotch Plains (just outside of Plainfield). A third generation family business, John's Meat Market has been in business since 1939 -- and has been voted best butcher shop in New Jersey four times! Check out their website here . We have one more stop out on route 22 before we finish up with the Plainfield area, so head over to The Market Report to check it out tomorrow!

Everybody's Food Market & Deli Owner: Godwin Sayers Opened:  1987 Cooperative:  unknown Location:  306 E Front St, Plainfield, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 Everybody's Food Market & Deli is our final downtown Plainfield store! As you can see in the picture, the central downtown area kind of ends right past this store. But we certainly got to see a lot in town. Make sure you check out today's other post too , over on The Market Report. And now that's all for downtown Plainfield, tomorrow we'll be heading out on South Avenue (NJ-28) from downtown to our next two stops, one closed store over on  Grocery Archaeology , and a tour at the store that's still in business right near it over on The Market Report !

Plainfield Health Food Store Owner: Moo Han Opened: 1989 under current ownership Cooperative:  none Location:  218 E Front St, Plainfield, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 Unfortunately, it looks as though Health Food Service (which today is the Plainfield Health Food Store) is more of a vitamin and supplement store than a food store, but come on, that sign was too good to just walk by without photographing! The building has been painted many times it seems, but the sign has probably been up for several decades. But wait, that's not all for today! We also have a former A&P just across the street over on Grocery Archaeology. And tomorrow, we have our final day of downtown Plainfield with one tour on The Market Report and a snapshot here on The Independent Edition!

Green Village Farm Owner: unknown Opened:  2015 Cooperative:  none Location:  149 E Front St, Plainfield, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 Green Village Farm is our next stop here downtown in Plainfield! It's a small storefront, but it goes very far back so it's a pretty substantial greengrocer at just under 7,000 square feet. Unfortunately, the outside could use some work as we can see above with (oddly) no sign and peeling paint. It's a fascinating building though, about four stories high but the entire front is bricked over. Are those apartments? Could the building have been a theater, which were frequently tall like that? Anyway, until about 2015 this store was called the Plainfield Farmers Market; when Green Village took over, they put a banner in the middle of the overhang but it has since been removed, leaving only the sign in the window. We're going to tour the store from the front entrance, but there's also an entrance and exit in the back that lead to a munici

World Supermarket Owner: Felix Pineda Opened:  2017 Cooperative:  Retail Grocers Group Location:  314 Somerset St, North Plainfield, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 Another day, another World Supermarket! We saw the original store on Front Street in Plainfield yesterday, which opened around 2012, and this newer one on Somerset Street in North Plainfield came along a little later, in 2017. At 6300 square feet, it's a bit smaller than the first one. This is also our third store today, so if you haven't yet checked out our first two, please do so here and here ! The interior is clearly newer than the other one, but it's also more split up. There are two main rooms: one, to the left, has the register, grocery aisles, and frozen foods. Then, there's a second storefront to the right which has produce and dairy. There's also a third room off of the first that has a butcher and a deli. The aisles, as we can see, are extremely narrow. I don't recall seeing shopping carts