The Independent Edition

Sea Bright Supermarket & Liquor Owner: unknown Opened:  2011 under current ownership Cooperative:  none Location:  1160 Ocean Ave, Sea Bright, NJ Photographed:  January 2021 We are out on the peninsula occupied by Monmouth Beach, Sea Bright, and Sandy Hook (from south to north), really the northernmost shore resort area. It's an extremely narrow strip of land -- a mere 1200 feet or less than a quarter mile wide at Sea Bright Supermarket -- and this store is the only grocery store on the peninsula. The 11,000 square foot store, though, is more a liquor store with some grocery items. At some point in its life, it had been a Foodtown, but it's long since been independent. I think it's fairly likely there was previously a Foodtown sign in place of where the Supermarket & Liquor sign is today. It's hard to tell exactly the store's history, but I can say that the right half of the store is about 8000 square feet, extending much farther back than the left half wh

It's time for our next (northern) Jersey Shore group! Unfortunately this is as far south as we'll be getting on the east coast of New Jersey, though we'll go a bit farther south when we get out to the western part of the state. We're going to pass along the coast through Port Monmouth, Atlantic Highlands, Sea Bright, Long Branch, West Long Branch, Belmar, and Brick with a relatively small group of just over a week's worth of stores. However, we'll double up on a few days so we see more than one store a day. As we can see in the map above, we're actually heading back up to north of the  Holmdel  area, then continuing all along the shore to Brick, which is about 20 miles south of  Tinton Falls  where we ended the last group. All of our coverage is going to be in Monmouth County, except for Brick Township which is in Ocean County. But for now, we'll be going back to the very northeastern part of Monmouth County tomorrow, for not one but  two  Foodtowns tomo

Livoti's Old World Market Owner: John Livoti Opened:  2017 Cooperative:  none Location:  1151 NJ-35, Middletown, NJ Photographed:  January 2021 It's time for our second of the three Livoti's! We saw the oldest location, Aberdeen , a few days back and we'll see Englishtown when we circle back through the central part of the state. At just over 14,000 square feet, this one is slightly smaller than Aberdeen but right in the same space range. The newly-renovated Middletown Marketplace was previously anchored by a 47,000 square foot Pathmark, which has been subdivided into a Bed Bath & Beyond and a TJ Maxx. Inside, the store looks a lot like Aberdeen, although it's a bit more modern with a slightly different decor package. Produce takes up about 1/3 of the store, with nonfoods and some general grocery in the shelving under the produce bins. We have deli and seafood on the back wall, with butcher in the back left corner. A cheese and pizza island is at the back of th

Dearborn Market Owner: Richard Saker / Saker Supermarkets Opened:  2015 under current ownership, 1925 previously Cooperative:  Wakefern Food Corp. Location:  2170 NJ-35, Holmdel, NJ Photographed:  January 2021 We are here in Holmdel to tour its one and only grocery store, Dearborn Market! (Holmdel also previously had an A&P, which we're taking a look at today on Grocery Archaeology .) The 21,000 square foot gourmet grocery store and garden center -- not including an outdoor greenhouse space, by the way -- was purchased in 2015 from its former owners by the owners of Saker ShopRites, whose Hazlet store we saw just over a mile west a few days ago. This is widely rumored to be in response to Wegmans indicating interest in the property, and their plan was said to be to demolish the existing building and use the nearly 1 million square foot (or approximately 23 acre) property for a newly-built Wegmans supermarket. Of course, this would hurt the nearby Saker ShopRites, but Saker --