The Independent Edition

Super Exito Supermarket Owner: Jay Patel Opened:  2007 Cooperative:  Krasdale Foods Location:  218 Dayton Ave, Clifton, NJ Photographed:  January 5, 2023 After many years we're returning to the Super Exito Supermarket at Botany Village in Clifton, NJ! We saw the store back in 2018 looking cramped, cluttered, random, and chock-full of personality. It's been fairly extensively renovated, and is feeling much more spacious but has also clearly lost a lot of personality (which I might gripe about, but who cares) but -- it felt like -- a lot of selection. The outside hasn't changed at all, which is odd since the logo seen here on this storefront is not the latest Exito logo. I guess it doesn't matter all that much, though, since the store uses the CTown circular and in fact it doesn't say Exito anywhere on the circular -- or on the inside of the store, for that matter. Some helpful commenters on my original post clarified the history of the store, most importantly that i...

Exito Freshmarket Owner: Gaurang Patel Opened:  2009 Cooperative:  Krasdale Location:  25 Broad St, Freehold, NJ Photographed:  January 2021 We are here just outside downtown Freehold for our second central Jersey Exito Freshmarket! (Make sure to check out Long Branch here .) This store is barely 5,000 square feet, located in just under half of a former 12,000 square foot Grand Union. This space has been several different tenants over the years, most recently a Bravo but becoming Exito around 2009. Like Long Branch, this one is a small but complete supermarket with a little bit of everything and a focus on Latin products. Taking a wider view of the strip mall, we can get a clearer idea that the anchor store was originally one single, larger Grand Union... Heading in to Exito, we find that it sports a very attractive decor package we've seen before, but still prominently features Bravo logos around the store. If memory serves me, the last place we saw this decor pack...

Exito Freshmarket Owner: Gaurang Patel Opened:  ca. 2014 Cooperative:  Krasdale Location:  176 Broadway, Long Branch, NJ Photographed:  January 2021 We are here in downtown Long Branch for the 7400 square foot Exito Freshmarket! This store, previously a CTown and then an independent store called Grand National Supermarket, is on the eastern end of Broadway, a corridor that's being redeveloped. In fact, the block just to the east was planned for a mixed-use development that included a SuperFresh, but this project has since been canceled. The only other thing I'll mention about the location is that downtown Long Branch does still have some very cool art deco buildings along Broadway  (including the New Jersey Repertory Company's theater, which is a small black-box theater run by very nice people, or so I'm told by a family member -- and frequent blog contributor -- in theater administration in northern NJ). Now let's focus on Exito! The front wall of the store, a...

Exito Freshmarket Owner: Tanuja Patel Opened:  ca. 2014 Cooperative:  Krasdale Location:  341 Montclair Ave, Forest Hill, Newark, NJ Photographed:  June 2020 Easily the most beautiful neighborhood of Newark, Forest Hill is located just outside Newark's Branch Brook Park . We're here in the northwestern corner of the neighborhood, right at the Belleville border, for a look at this store in the range of 4000 square feet. It's a bit of a convenience store which happens to have a large perishables selection and a liquor section, but before Exito opened here around 2014 it was pretty much a regular convenience store. Exito runs several small grocery stores and supermarkets, with the largest being Super Exito Supermarket in Clifton. See our tour here for more exhaustive background on the chain. The first aisle contains produce and dairy. I really like the wood produce shelving we see to the right here! Refrigerated produce takes up the front part of the first aisle. By ...