The Independent Edition

Green Way Markets Owner: Robin Estevez Opened:  February 2021 Cooperative:  Allegiance Retail Services Location:  112 N Maple Ave, Ridgewood, NJ Photographed:  February 2021 When Kings Food Markets' parent company went bankrupt in late 2020, 19 of the 25 stores were purchased by ACME Markets. Five stores were closed entirely (Maplewood, Bernardsville, Warren, Hoboken South, and Gillette), and one store was briefly closed but purchased by Estevez Markets, an Allegiance member who owns several Foodtown stores, including the ones we saw in Hastings-on-Hudson and Yonkers . That's this one in Ridgewood, and you can see my pre-closing tour here . Instead of converting the store to the more mainstream Foodtown banner, like Old Tappan , Estevez used the higher-end Green Way Markets banner first introduced in Cross River, NY , in 2019. Green Way is also the name of the natural and organic storebrand purchased by Allegiance from A&P. Estevez has only one other New Jersey...

Cafasso's Fairway Market Owner:  Charles Cafasso Opened:  1962 in current location; 1927 in original location Cooperative:  none Location:  1214 Anderson Ave, Fort Lee, NJ Photographed:  June 2020 No, not that Fairway Market . This one predates that one and actually sued the more famous New York chain when they opened a store in Paramus. This one is a thousand times better than the other one was. I won't go too much into the history of the store, especially since their own website does a fantastic job of profiling the history of the fourth-generation family business. This small, unassuming storefront on Anderson Avenue in Fort Lee happens to be one of the most impressive gourmet markets I've ever stepped foot in. We enter on the far right side of the store, going into produce/bakery/cheese to the far right and deli/butcher on the back wall, with dairy in the first aisle and meat/frozen in the last aisle. Let's head in and see how awesome...

City Supermarket Owner:  Mitchel Lopez Opened:  2020 Cooperative:  Retail Grocers Group Location:  289 Bergen Blvd, Fairview, NJ Photographed:  June 2020 It's finally time to tour the brand-new City Supermarket in Fairview! I visited this store the second week it was open back in June of 2020 and it did not disappoint, despite not being fully set up yet. For a bit of context here, this store was originally an A&P (it's actually a Centennial buried way in the back of the building), which expanded to about 37,000 square feet eventually. Fairview had a larger, 45,000 square foot Waldbaum's built in the 90s and later converted to an A&P, which is now a Food Bazaar , so this location was scaled back to a Food Basics at just 30,000 square feet. In 2016, the store was bought by Key Food owner Kevin Kim and converted to a Key Food Marketplace  with a reopening of the service departments closed by Food Basics. Key Food was later switched ...