TOUR: Pennington Quality Market - Pennington, NJ

Pennington Quality Market

Owner: Lawrence Rothwell

Opened: 1981

Cooperative: IGA
Location: 25 NJ-31 S, Pennington, NJ

Photographed: January 2021

We arrive at one of three supermarkets in the small town of Pennington, NJ (population 2500). The other two are a ShopRite and a Stop & Shop, and believe it or not this IGA is ever so slightly larger than the ShopRite in town at 36,000 square feet. (The Stop & Shop is 57,000 square feet and deadly boring.) Let's take a look at this Pennington Quality Market, a really nice and well-run grocery store that seems to be quite a popular choice for Pennington shoppers.

We begin with bakery in the front right corner (try the brownies and thank me later). Produce takes up the rest of the first aisle, with meat/seafood, prepared foods, and deli in that order right to left on the back wall. We have dairy, frozen, and a cafe at the far end of the store.

As we can see, this store is also on the older side but is looking a lot more up-to-date than the ShopRite. This store opened in 1981 but I wouldn't be surprised if it were a different supermarket before that; from 1981 to 2016 it was a Thriftway and in 2016 PQM joined the Retail Marketing Group subgroup of IGA.

Here's a look across the back wall with meat department on the right side. Service deli and seafood begin under the lower green ceiling we see ahead.

Much like the ShopRite, this store packs a lot of services into a small space. This store doesn't have a pharmacy, but the ShopRite doesn't have a service floral department to my knowledge.

Very cool backlit aisle markers here in the grocery aisles. We have IGA and Seven Farms (natural/organic) brands here, with a selection of average grocery items and higher-end specialty and organic throughout.

Towards the back of the store, we have service seafood, prepared foods (sandwiches, hot food, and sushi -- now that's something the ShopRite didn't have).

Looks like a lot of these cases have been replaced recently. Now as we move on towards the end of the store, we have more recent upgrades...

Dairy lines the outside of the end of the store on the left side and front walls. In the back half, we have a coffee shop/cafe, and a few short horizontal frozen aisles.

This is a very nice feature to have! Nice design and good flooring, too. This looks quite new. In front of this section we have a few short freezer aisles that run perpendicular to the rest of the grocery aisles...

Nice wooden category markers here, too.

Here we're looking over to dairy on the left side wall of the store.

And we move into the front of the store, with dairy and floral behind it, and more frozen cases beyond...

Again, this flooring looks much newer. Floral takes up the front left corner...

And surprisingly, PQM is even keeping up with the addition of self-checkouts. Nice feature!

We can get a good sense of the store's age and maintenance here; notice the flooring is older but spotless and newly resurfaced. I also like the signage introducing the managers hanging around the store! Don't forget to see the ShopRite in town here, and tomorrow I'll introduce our next group of stores as we continue heading south from here!