Asian Food Markets
Owner: Jon Chen
Opened: 2006
Cooperative: none
Location: 1339 Centennial Ave, Piscataway, NJ
Photographed: July 2020
We're here in the section of Piscataway that has all the big box stores. Centennial Square, where this store is located, also is home to a Lowe's, a Walmart, and an ALDI (which we're also touring today because why not!). Also check out today's tour of the ShopRite across the street here. Our past tours of Asian Food Markets include Jersey City and Marlboro.
The 23,000 square foot store starts with an expansive produce and meat department in the grand aisle, with service seafood and butcher taking up the rest of the back wall. The last aisle has frozen foods, with a bakery and prepared foods department in the front corner.
Like many deep and narrow stores, this location is divided with a center aisle halfway across the store.
The meat department takes up the back corner. Oddly, there is no sign other than the poster advertising Lee Kum Kee, a brand of sauces and other packaged goods. Very good stuff, but not exactly a sign for the meat department.
The service departments on the back wall, however, are labeled. Notice that this is an older decor package than what we see in Jersey City and Marlboro.
Very clean grocery aisles, but not a whole lot of visual interest with the fixtures or decor.
The rice department takes up the back corner, and while I'm sure the store does a big business on large packages of rice, this looks like it may have been another service department at one time. I could be wrong, though, given the fact that it looks like the bathrooms are right behind it. It wouldn't make much sense for the bathrooms to be behind a service counter.
Frozen foods take up the last aisle. While the cases on the left look quite new, the cases on the right look very, very old. Definitely secondhand from somewhere else.
A small bakery and hot food counter takes up the front corner of the store. The rest of the front wall is customer service and checkouts.
Wrapping up with a look at the registers. Anyone recognize those checkout lane markers? Are they secondhand from somewhere else or original to this store? Anyway, that's all for Asian Food Markets, and if you haven't yet, check out the ALDI in the same strip! That's all for Edison and Piscataway, come back tomorrow to see where we're headed next!
Noting you didn't suggest what this might have been prior to it's current tenant, but it does look like some type of other market perhaps?
ReplyDeleteThe bathroom thing is a bit more unusual by the counter, though many older stores did have them "behind the walls" - in fact, we still have one here (a 1977 Grand Union that is now a Tractor Supply) where they opened a small section for extra storage of large bagged items in the vicinity of the restrooms. However, the doorway you walk through would have been between meat counters (or between meat and deli) to get back to the restrooms and would have had doors just like you see to the right of the rice sign - so maybe somehow redesigned to bring the restroom access outside the back room?).
It was a kids clothing store. I forget the name.
DeleteThanks for the history! That is an interesting point, BillyGr.
DeleteOld Navy I believe
DeleteAnonymous Old Navy was located in where Aldi is now.
DeleteIt was a Childrenswear Center. There was a chain of about 5 of them in the early 2000s.
Delete