TOUR: McCaffrey's Food Markets - Princeton, NJ

McCaffrey's Food Markets

Owner: Jim McCaffrey III

Opened: 1992
Cooperative: none
Location: 301 N Harrison St, Princeton, NJ

Photographed: January 2021

Welcome to the town of Princeton, NJ! Its most major attraction, of course, is the second McCaffrey's Food Market here in a 32,000 square foot building in a very strange mall just outside of downtown. Oh, and perhaps a person or who comes to the town for Princeton University, too, I suppose. The university is located right downtown in the center of this beautiful small city of 31,000 people, and this supermarket is about a mile and a quarter northeast of the central town area. Harrison Street intersects with Nassau Street just south of this mall, which then becomes the main thoroughfare through town.

Princeton is decidedly a college town, but it's also a cultural and commercial hub for the area. There's a lot of pharmaceutical business going on outside of the downtown area, and the college naturally serves as an artistic center featuring one of the state's top theaters as well as its own art museum, both of which are highly recommended. In addition to this McCaffrey's, the town of Princeton is served by a Whole Foods (formerly a Pathmark) and a Wegmans both south of town on route 1.

Here's a look at this mall's unusual setup. There are two rows of stores with an anchor at either end, and there's a large grassy concourse in the middle. I'm not sure whether this is very heavily used, as the rear row of stores seemed a bit desolate. But it is definitely attractive, if strange. Parking lots surround the whole setup. McCaffrey's has an entrance facing the parking lot (shown in the first picture and below), and then a second entrance facing this outdoor mall area that takes customers into deli/bakery and the liquor store in the back (shown in the second picture).

We're going to tour the store from the front, starting with produce in the front left corner. We move on to meat in the first aisle, with service seafood and deli on the back wall along with a large prepared foods department. Dairy is actually in the second aisle here, with frozen foods lining the last aisle to the far right of the store.

I don't know if this store was previously another chain (or independent) supermarket before becoming McCaffrey's, but it does look like we've had some remodeling since opening. The polished concrete floor and fixtures here, for instance, look much newer than the 90s.

I'm struggling a little bit to understand the layout of the store with this produce department, which as we see is in the front left corner of the store but only has one entrance to the main supermarket, which you can see under the wall-mounted light to the right in the above photo.

Floral is between the entrance and the front-end area. I assume the area behind the floral department, which does not extend as far back as the rest of the store, is backroom space.

After floral is customer service on the front wall, and the front end beyond it.

The first aisle has packaged meat and produce. It does look like these fixtures are original to the store's opening in the 90s.

But unlike the produce area, it doesn't look like this flooring has been replaced after the original decor package, and it seems to fit in nicely with what's on the walls.

Service butcher in the first aisle here, and I believe the produce department is located behind it. As we can tell, this store is certainly a higher end-positioned store.

Very streamlined dairy department here in the second grocery aisle.

And to really get a sense of the store's upscale positioning, we can see the gigantic service seafood and deli departments extending across the entire back wall of the store. We'll get to the deli area in more detail shortly.

McCaffrey's has again a more upscale positioned center store but we also can see that there's a selection of the basics with Essential Everyday and Wild Harvest storebrand items from UNFI.

Notice the shelving that looks so much like what we see in 90s A&Ps. I do believe that the same design firm was responsible for that era of A&P stores as that era of McCaffrey's, and we'll see more evidence of that at our next McCaffrey's.

Like many of the larger and more upscale stores, there are separate counters for the sliced-to-order deli and salads, shown here, and sandwiches, and prepared foods, and so on.

Lots to choose from and I love the graphics on the walls!

We move on to the back entrance of the store, seen here, with cheese in front of it. The entrance to the cafe on the second floor is in the back here, and liquor and bakery are in the room next to that under the cafe.

Looking back towards the cheese department.

Here we're standing in the liquor store looking out towards cheese.

Beautiful merchandising here! And I love the floor. The bakery department lines the front wall of this section.

For one reason or another, the bakery is the only department to get its own department sign. And clearly this is quite a priority department for McCaffrey's, again like all of the perishables departments.

Frozen foods in the last grocery aisle. As we see, this store is an extremely upscale if a little older supermarket, and has been maintained beautifully. There's barely even a need for renovation here.

And here's a look at the front end before we head out. Tomorrow, we head out a little bit east for our first of two days in Plainsboro, for one store here on The Independent Edition and one over on Grocery Archaeology!