TOUR: Garden Farm Market - North Brunswick, NJ

Garden Farm Market

Owner: Ki Chung

Opened: 1997

Cooperative: none

Location: 2545 US-1, North Brunswick, NJ

Photographed: February 2021

This 13,000 square foot arched-roof building (probably a former skating rink) is today home to the Garden Farm Market in North Brunswick. Up until 2011, this space was occupied by a store called the Garden State Farmers Market, being taken over that year by the owners -- I think -- of the Garden Farm Market in Metuchen and others. An extensive remodel in 2017 eliminated the signature orange and green exterior and replaced it with this much more modern, sleeker beige and red color scheme.

Although this side faces the highway, the front wall of the store runs along the side of the building. The entrance and exit are in the back corner, since most of the parking is in the rear. You enter in the back right corner with produce in the back half of the store. Frozen is on the left side wall. The front half has deli and seafood on the front wall and a few short grocery aisles.

An overview of the interior from just inside the entrance. As we can see, the store is very open and the sightlines extend across the whole interior.

Most of the store features produce piled high, just like Metuchen. As we can see, though, this store's interior is much more updated than Metuchen.

The quality and pricing seemed to be pretty good, factoring in of course the fact that I visited in February so basically nothing was in season.

This farmers market seems to do a very high volume, since the sheer quantity of product is incredible. I assume if the store didn't sell so much, they wouldn't have as much product in each display.

Here's where the produce transitions to grocery aisles, which run front-to-back. Also notice the gorgeous wooden arched ceiling.

Fascinating freezer cases for seafood in the back here, I don't think I've ever seen anything like them before.

Seafood also seems to do a big business, and as we can see there's quite a large selection. Very cool flooring here as well.

The grocery selection, as you can see if you zoom in, seems to angle highly specialty, selling products you might not find at a regular supermarket instead of just the basics.

The deli is also large and nicely stocked, and I very much like the wood textures here. It contrasts very nicely with the dark wood ceiling. This is the front wall to the right, with the side wall (entrance/exit/checkout) seen to the left here. There's also a small dairy section and a very nice baked goods section in the front -- a good selection for a place that doesn't bake in-store.

You can see a tiny hint of green paint on the wall behind the security camera to the left. I assume the interior and exterior were both renovated at the same time, which would make sense. Up next we are visiting our next North Brunswick store, just to the northeast about three and a half miles on route 1 as we begin to head towards New Brunswick!