TOUR: Super Supermarket - Haledon, NJ

Super Supermarket

Owner: Antonio Perez

Opened: 2008 under current ownership

Cooperative: Retail Grocers Group

Location: 408 Haledon Ave, Haledon, NJ

Photographed: July 2020

There is one important piece of business we must cover before we tour this store. Can any native Haledonians out there tell me how this town's name is pronounced? Is it "Hail-dun" or "Hail-a-dun" or "Hal-a-dun" or "Hal-dun"? (Oh, and by the way, I've learned that my native New Jersey pronunciation of some words is important here. To me, the first syllable of "parents" is not the same sound as "pair," instead being something closer to pahr, a sound that my good friend who's a Baltimore native actually cannot recreate. In most regions of the country, that sound doesn't exist. Another example is that the name Mary and the word marry are two very different sounds. So I guess I'm asking about the difference between the name Hal and the freezing precipitation, hail, in the pronunciation of this town. Anyway... this is not a linguistics blog, this is a supermarket blog. So here we go.)

This 25,000 square foot store started out as a Food Fair. At some point, it was taken over by Paterson native company Nicholas Markets Foodtown, whose North Haledon location just up the street we saw a while ago. Over time, the Italian population of Paterson and Haledon dwindled, moving to the northern suburbs. Nicholas closed their Paterson and Haledon stores, with Paterson becoming a Rite Aid and Haledon being taken over by local chain Super Supermarkets (we've seen their Orange and Paterson locations previously). While I believe that changeover happened in the 1990s, this store appears to have changed ownership again in 2008. I could be wrong though, with Super opening in 2008, much later than I would've thought.

As we'll see, this Super is not nearly as nice as Paterson and Orange. It's still a solid place and Haledon's only supermarket. Produce is in the front right corner, with deli/hot food and seafood/butcher at the back of the first aisle. Meats run along the back wall with frozen and dairy in the last aisle. Let's head in!

Produce was undergoing a reset at the time of my visit, so I didn't photograph it extensively. We're looking towards the front corner of the store, with the wall to the left being the right side wall of the store and the wall to the right being the front wall. Deli and hot food, closed for the day when I visited, are next in the first aisle...

The decor is interesting here. I've never seen it in any other store. The other Super stores used the decor the prior tenant used (Mayfair in Orange, for instance), but I have no idea what Nicholas Markets' past decor packages would've looked like. My assumption was that this decor, however, was installed by Super in the 1990s when they moved in.

Service butcher temporarily closed at the time of my visit due to coronavirus, but the seafood counter was up and running. Meats continue along the rest of the back wall.

Moving into the grocery aisles, we can tell that this is a much older store. But the aisle markers have been updated more recently than the rest of the decor.

Conventional wisdom says supermarkets get their deliveries on Tuesday and Friday. I don't know if that's true or not, but I visited this store on a Tuesday and there was a lot of merchandise waiting to be stocked, as well as a lot of stocking going on.

As you can expect from Super, the international aisle is excellent.

The nonfoods aisle is looking a bit clearer, which gives us a chance to look at the floor. It does seem to match the decor, but it's near impossible to tell how old it is because it's clearly been refinished (and patched in a few places, such as the bottom left here).

Dairy and frozen take up the last aisle. As you can see, this store is deeper than it is wide. And along the front end, the giant food pictures on the wall turn into what seem to be famous American landmarks...

"Thank you for shopping" is centered on the front wall, meaning it probably didn't previously have the store's name (i.e., Foodtown) next to it. Anyway, I'm not entirely sure on the history progression here but today Super Supermarket in Haledon is looking good if a bit older than the other locations. We're moving back into Wayne tomorrow for a store I photographed while it was under construction on The Market Report!