Save More Meat & Produce Market
Owner: unknown, possibly Nick Gonzalez
Opened: 2020-2021
Cooperative: Krasdale
Location: 84 Main St, South Bound Brook, NJ
Photographed: July 2020
We are here in South Bound Brook to tour the 4500-person town's only grocery store, which unfortunately recently closed in early 2021. We saw this location back in 2018 when Fresh Market had closed up shop in the 4600 square foot space, and that post also has a bit of the history of the tenants. The 9300 square foot building, which has since been subdivided, was originally home to a ShopRite -- likely a Saker store, which probably then moved up to Bound Brook about a mile and a half to the northwest, then that store was replaced by an even newer store in the 90s just next door.
Save More Meat & Produce Market opened up in late 2019 or early 2020 and clearly remodeled the place very nicely. Many of the fixtures seem to be new, and the flooring and lighting definitely are. The store uses the same price signage as Food Depot and Extra Supermarkets in the northern part of the state, but I don't know that the store has any connection to those. Now that the store has closed, there's actually a stronger connection to them... the CTown on Clinton Ave in Newark, which shares an ownership group with them, received this store's exterior signage when it closed. As you can see in that Google Maps street view, the store is losing many of the letters in CTown, so I'm surprised they didn't just change the name entirely and give up on the deteriorating CTown signage.
Produce and dairy line the first aisle, with service butcher and deli on the back wall, and packaged meats and frozen in the last aisle.
It did seem that the service counter had been closed, but the case was clearly still refrigerating (notice the condensation on the case from a very hot day). Possibly the service was reduced for the coronavirus, or maybe it's just been permanently closed.
Four aisles in total, with an emphasis on Latin foods. There's plenty of the basics throughout the store too, and you can see how high the shelves are stacked.
Plenty of packaged meats even if the service department is closed.
Looking up towards the front of the store. You can really get a sense of how much they pack into the tiny space, with a small frozen department and even a fresh bread case in the front of the store.
Looking across the front end with another row of produce and a few registers in the front. That's all for South Bound Brook, but tomorrow we're crossing the Raritan River to Bound Brook, the next town to the north (which is also much larger than South Bound Brook with more than double the population). We'll be seeing a small store downtown tomorrow right here on The Independent Edition!
So this store and the Middlesex Pathmark were both Shoprites at the same time? They seem so close to each other.
ReplyDeleteThough it seems many stores had more locations years back when stores were smaller - either just for convenience or maybe due to actually being small?
DeleteOne other question - is that "symbol" supposed to be a logo, foreign character or was the store actually named U Save More (with the U being done in that "fancy" style)?
Billy - to me, the "symbol" likes like a shopping cart in the form of a U. So it's possible the store was U Save More. Nice eye.
DeleteTo Andrew - I believe that they were under different ownership. South Bound Brook was almost definitely either a Saker or some independent owner that Saker bought out; Middlesex was Supermarkets General.
DeleteAnd to BillyGr and Ben, yeah, I don't know what the symbol exactly is supposed to be. I do think that it's intended as a stylized shopping cart rather than another letter. I'm assuming the store is called Save More and not U Save More because the Google Maps listing was under "SAVE MORE MEAT & PRODUCE MARKET" (not sure why it was all-caps). The store's Facebook page is also under Save More, so I don't think it was intended to be the letter U. Of course, it's some pretty poor design either way.