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TOUR: Garden Supermarket - Passaic, NJ

Garden Supermarket
Manager: Angel Delacruz
Opened: unknown
Cooperative: unknown
Location: 45 Garden St, Passaic, NJ
Photographed: July 2020
Today's store tour is a small supermarket just west of Main Avenue, the primary thoroughfare through downtown Passaic. It's a bit hard to get the exact square footage but according to Google Maps it's about 3400 square feet. It's a small store but seems to be (or, maybe more accurately, to have been) an impressively complete supermarket. It's hard to tell how much of the reduction in services is temporary, perhaps due to the coronavirus, or whether it's permanent as the store winds down.
Produce and dairy line the first aisle. Along the back wall a service counter takes up most of the space, but it's empty. Looks like it used to be a combined meat and deli case.
I wouldn't be surprised if this case is secondhand from a supermarket, probably a ShopRite. One of two ShopRites in Passaic closed back in 2015, with a replacement store opening just over the river in Wallington. Very likely this case came from there.
Oddly, this store does not use a standard storebrand. Many of the items in fact seem to be purchased from other stores -- we see Kirkland Signature (Costco) individual paper towel rolls here, some cases of Paperbird (ShopRite) paper goods, and I bought a Bowl & Basket (ShopRite again) bottle of water here.
The last aisle contains single-serve drinks in cases that look like they may once have been freezers but are now just refrigerated.
Checkout looks more like a convenience store, with a single register behind a counter. That's all for today's store tour, and tomorrow we'll be out on Main Avenue at an independent greengrocer. Stay tuned!

Comments

  1. I know ShopRite (or more precisely Wakefern) does sell to other stores in other areas (saw their items in some nonperishable categories like the paper items at a small chain out in Ohio several years ago) but not sure if they do (or would) do the same someplace where the store is potentially in competition with their own member's stores.

    Of course, by the time you were photographing this, anything is possible (even perhaps surprising that the paper items were as well stocked as they were).

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    Replies
    1. Definitely a possibility -- I do think given the random storebrands including Costco brands, this is probably not quite that organized.

      Offhand, I believe Wakefern's wholesale business has shrunk a bit recently, since they do have Heinen's out in OH like you said, and then Morton Williams in the NYC area. They're still selling wholesale to Kings, though now that ACME owns Kings I have to imagine that arrangement is not long for this world. I believe they provide some Price Rite branded products to North Shore Farms on Long Island, but they've recently lost Gristedes (which is now an Allegiance member and sells the Foodtown brand) and Top Tomato (which used to get Price Rite products and now uses ASG's Avenue A products).

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