TOUR: Botto's Italian Market - Swedesboro, NJ

Botto's Italian Market
Owner: Catherine Botto

Opened: 1997

Cooperative: none
Location: 1411 Kings Hwy, Swedesboro, NJ

Photographed: January 2022

I was incredibly disappointed upon entering Swedesboro, New Jersey and finding that their only grocery store was not in fact a Swedish grocer, and that there weren't even Swedish Fish available for sale (which I assume to be the national cuisine of Sweden, right?). But I will say that if I can't have that, one of the best independent Italian markets in New Jersey will do just fine. So let's tour, as our final New Jersey store, the roughly 10,000 square foot Botto's Italian Market.

If you want to read about the store, I recommend you check out this profile from 2013. The store is attached to Botto's Italian Line restaurant, which I'm sure is excellent as well, and they also sell their products online. Inside the grocery store, we have most of the sales floor (unsurprisingly) taken up by Italian groceries, with produce on the right side, frozen/dairy on the back wall, and the left side wall lined up with service departments -- meat, seafood, deli, and bakery from back to front. There's also about two or three grocery aisles in the back. So not only does the store have an impressive selection of really nice specialty goods, it's got a solid selection of the basics for this town which otherwise does not have a supermarket. There's an ACME about three miles west of town, and a ShopRite roughly five miles east. And by the way, Swedesboro is a small town of about 2500 roughly 16 miles outside of Camden.

It's possible these produce cases were brought in secondhand from another store when this one opened in 1997, but they're in such good shape I find that hard to believe. It's just that they're an older style with the mirrors above.

Frozen foods -- including a lot of homemade pasta, as we see -- on the back wall, with dairy to the left. In the grocery aisles, we find plenty of the basics but mostly items with which you'd cook the ingredients Botto's also sells, such as meat and seafood.

Hy-Top on the shelves, by the way.

As we see, it's not quite a full supermarket but it's got almost everything you'd need. Plus, the quality of everything was exceptional. Very good pricing on the specialty things, too.

Butcher and seafood on the side wall, with an emphasis on the homemade sausage.

And really beautiful cuts of meat, too! Deli and prepared foods are up next, with bakery in the front corner as we see on the angle in the above picture.

And the cheese island, of course! Above we also get a good overview of the whole store, with the entrance on the other side of the pasta shelving to the right. There are two or three registers out of frame to the right. They're set up like normal supermarket registers, but running parallel to the front wall rather than perpendicular as we'd expect.

Beautiful bakery (which receives a grade of A+ for quality from this baked goods connoisseur).

Great deli, too, although I didn't purchase anything from it.

Folks, that is the end of New Jersey...for now! For a bit of housekeeping: we're going to take some time off, because let me tell you, I am exhausted. Here's the next few dates to keep an eye on:

• Tomorrow (4/9): Let me be your tour guide around the great state of New Jersey as we visit the non-supermarket attractions across the Garden State! This, of course, is Streetside Sights & Scenes, over on The Market Report tomorrow.
• 4/10-4/30: Time for our spring break. No store posts for three weeks. (Except for a few super top secret surprise updates on 4/10, but don't tell anybody.)
• 4/17-4/23: Memorabilia Week on Grocery Archaeology during spring break!
• 5/1: Store posts resume as we move into the mid-Atlantic area!

Thank you for traveling with me across New Jersey and I can't wait to get on to the next states. Come back for Streetside Sights & Scenes tomorrow on The Market Report!