Hayek's Market
Owner: Dan & Denise Hayek
Okay, we've gotten our tours of the ShopRite and Weis out of the way here in Newton. Now for the fun! We're heading into the center of downtown Newton, which is certainly not a large city but is a substantial town and the county seat of Sussex County. Hayek's has been around for over 80 years, under various names, and you can read the full history here. Today, in its latest iteration, it's a 7700 square foot supermarket with just about everything but a focus on the fresh items.
Before we head in, you see how much rain was falling while I was taking that first picture? Yeah, I was in a hurry to get inside here. I brought an umbrella with me this day but didn't so much feel like carrying it around each of the stores so I ended up leaving it in the car for most of the stops. Let's head in!
We enter to bakery and a large prepared foods department in the first aisle. Cheese and prepared foods that are packaged line the left side, which we can see above. The interior is pretty high-end, as we might expect from the newly-renovated exterior, with a lot of store-made items. Great bakery here.
There's also a few short grocery aisles, with certainly all the basics along with some more specialized and local products.
The store uses Best Yet storebrand products. I love the diagonal wood flooring!
The deli, which is the centerpiece of the store, takes up the entire back wall. As we move into the last aisle, we have meats and butcher on the outside wall, with produce on the facing aisle.
I wish I could've gotten better pictures of this area, but it was really busy. They seem to do a brisk business here, and local customers are loyal to their perishables. (And honestly, why wouldn't they be? That's the best part of this store. Aside from the ice cream parlor, of course.)
Owner: Dan & Denise Hayek
Opened: 1939 as Premier Food Market
Cooperative: none
Location: 1 Mill Street, Newton, NJ
Cooperative: none
Location: 1 Mill Street, Newton, NJ
Photographed: July 2020
Notice the angled registers for space-saving and the additional stock on the front wall. Great use of space! After these stops in Newton, we are continuing south along 206 for our next stop on Grocery Archaeology tomorrow.
This is such a beautiful store and proof that bigger isn't always better. Out of all the stores you profiled on The Independent Edition, the nicest looking (IMO) are Hayek's Market, the Uncle Giuseppe's Marketplace in Ramsey, and the Aisle One store in Passaic. (Admittedly, there are many profiles on this website that I have yet to read, but these are the best stores out of the ones I've read about.) In a sense, the appearance of Hayek's Market is the most impressive of the three stores I mentioned, given that its owners have less money to invest than the owners of Aisle One or Uncle Giuseppe's.
ReplyDeleteI'd be very curious to know which stores profiled on The Independent Edition are your favorites.
--A&P Fan
What an interesting question -- those are some of the most beautiful stores I've shown here!
DeleteRecently...
Maybe not the most visually exciting but for shopping I do love Mitchel Lopez's stores (recently I've posted the Extra Supermarkets in Elizabeth/JC/Newark and City Supermarket in Fairview, also the City Supermarkets in Newark/Irvington way back on The Market Report). The product diversity is incredible, especially in City Newark and Fairview, the perishables are all fantastic, and pricing is usually great.
Barth's Market in New Providence is a great little place and very impressive compared to what it was just a few years ago.
And before that...
Dearborn Market, Newark's Food Depot, the Tenafly Gourmet Farm, Stew Leonard's, the Corrado's stores, the Giant Farmers Markets, Morgan's Grocery of Penn Yan, the T-Burg ShurSave, Caraluzzi's in Bethel, SY Grace Caribbean in the Bronx, Lincoln Market in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Golden Farms in Ozone Park, Bayside Milk Farm, North Shore Farms in Whitestone, and Brooklyn Fare in NYC (although I've never posted a full tour) are some of the most memorable and enjoyable stores I've posted here. And some of those are going way back two years or more. You're asking me to choose my favorite children -- it's hard!
Zachary, thanks so much for your response!
DeleteThough I have not yet looked at your profiles for all those supermarkets you mentioned, I did look at the ones you wrote for Stew Leonard's, the Corrado's stores, and Mitchel Lopez's Extra Supermarkets. I must say those stores all seem very impressive (save for the Corrado's in North Arlington, which as you pointed out is an anomaly from the rest of that chain).
I had a favorable impression of Barth's Market even before its renovation and expansion, but I unfortunately haven't visited that store recently. I'd really love to visit Stew Leonard's, but the Paramus Park Mall isn't the easiest drive for me to make. (It would be great if Stew Leonard's could open in another vacant Sears or in a former Lord & Taylor; Livingston Mall, Bridgewater Commons, and Rockaway Townsquare Mall are all convenient for me, though I concede that Livingston Mall is going to have trouble attracting any big new tenants.)
I really applaud you for profiling all of these independent supermarket operators. If not for the hard work you put into The Independent Edition, I'd never be aware of so many of these lesser-known supermarkets.
--A&P Fan
Thanks!
DeleteStew Leonard's is also working on a second New Jersey store in Clifton, which may be slightly more convenient. I don't know where it will be yet, though.
Glad to be your guide to independent food stores all around, since this is honestly the most exciting part of writing the blogs!