The Independent Edition

Extra Supermarkets Owner: Orfilio Chaviano and Nick Gonzalez Opening:  Spring 2024 Cooperative:  none Location:  80 Central Ave, East Orange, NJ Photographed:  December 20, 2023 Extra Supermarkets is preparing a second store in East Orange! Their original East Orange store is in the former ShopRite at 563 Central Ave , and now a second one is under construction in a former 11,000 square foot Rite Aid-turned-Walgreens 16 blocks (a little over a mile) to the east. This one is just a couple blocks west of the Newark border, while the other one is about the same distance to the Orange border. The store was announced last September and is expected to open this spring (originally expected to open last fall). In addition to Extra locations in East Orange, Newark , Maplewood , and Dover , this group owns Food Depot stores in Newark , Kearny, and Belleville (although the East Orange one that was supposedly in progress a while ago has been canceled and the building is now ...

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...

Extra Supermarket Owner: Alberto Mendez and/or Nick Gonzalez Opened:  2021 Cooperative:  Krasdale Location:  36-42 W Blackwell St, Dover, NJ Photographed:  July 2020 and March 2021 The main supermarket operating today in downtown Dover is the roughly 18,000 square foot Extra Supermarket, which was a Bravo for a very long time. It didn't change ownership, but for one reason or another in very early 2021 it was switched over to Extra owned by the same folks who own Maplewood , Lyons , and East Orange . My summer 2020 visit showed some signs of the impending switch... ...you know, like the Extra truck delivering in the back. By March 2021, the store had been switched over to Extra if only in part -- the Bravo signage remained on the outside, although the signage inside had been updated. The exterior signage has since been updated. Here's a look at the back entrance facing the parking lot in the back, which I don't believe I included in the original post of the Bravo. ...

Extra Supermarket Owner:  Mitchel Lopez Opened:  2018 Cooperative:  Retail Grocers Group Location:  865 E Grand St, Union Square, Elizabeth, NJ Photographed:  March 2020 We have returned to Pointe Grande Plaza just to the north of Union Square in Elizabeth. This store was built in 2015-2017 as Supermarkets Plus IGA , a somewhat shady but nicely built-out new build store owned by Nick Nasser, who has had several other crash-and-burn stores -- some quite literally . Not this one though, which was sold to Jersey City-based Extra Supermarket owned by Mitchel Lopez, who also owns Extra stores in Jersey City and Newark , along with City Supermarkets in Newark ,  Irvington , and Fairview . These municipalities are all actually very close together, but we've seen them at different times because JC is in Hudson County, Fairview is in Bergen County, Newark/Irvington are in Essex County, and Elizabeth is in Union County. We last saw this store just ...

Extra Supermarket Owner: Mitchel Lopez Opened:  2001 Cooperative:  Retail Grocers Group Location:  360 Martin Luther King Jr Dr, Bergen-Lafayette, Jersey City, NJ Photographed:  December 2020 We're returning to the Extra Supermarket here in the Bergen-Lafayette section of the southern part of Jersey City after first seeing it back in September 2018 . As I mentioned in that post, the store was just beginning a renovation which finished sometime in 2019, I believe. We'll be taking a look at the interior in a second, but first, check out that updated sign! Much easier to read than the red-on-brick that was here previously. Moving into the store, the interior is looking better than ever. The retrofitted Citi Market decor we saw previously has been removed and replaced with a much more modern decor package with a lot of Jersey City character. The layout remains the same, with produce on the left side of the grand aisle and deli/seafood in an island on the right side, bake...