The Independent Edition

Riverside Market Owner: Brett Campbell Opened:  2004-2020 Cooperative:  none Location:  736 Mantoloking Rd, Brick, NJ Photographed:  November 2019 It's our second store in Brick and our final store along the Jersey Shore, at least as much of it as we're seeing this time! (Don't forget to also see the Trader Joe's in Brick here , and the 91 Farmers Market if you missed it here .) This 2400 square foot grocery store is extremely familiar to me despite never having gone in, as I'd always drive by it on the way to my grandparents' house nearby for as long as I can remember. It's been a long time since I was at their house now, and in late 2020, this store closed up shop for good. It's certainly not a supermarket -- more a large deli-grocery store -- but I'm glad I photographed it nonetheless, especially now that it's gone. I wonder what area residents and shore vacationers are going to do without that giant yellow RIVERSIDE sign to use as a landmark!...

Defaria Deli Store Owner: Jim Defaria Opened:  2019 Cooperative:  none Location:  624 Broadway, Long Branch, NJ Photographed:  January 2021 Our last Long Branch store is here at Defaria Deli Store! This store is quite interesting to me although I don't entirely understand it. Within a block or two there are several Defaria businesses, which all seem to be owned by different family members (I listed Jim Defaria as the owner here, although I don't know that he actually is -- he owns the building supplies store next door according to Manta). I don't entirely understand the idea of owning a building supplies store, a flooring business, a garage, and a grocery store together, but hey, it works I guess. The 9,000 square foot store also has a parking lot, shared with the other assorted businesses, in the back. The deli lines the right wall of the store, although it wasn't really set up at the time of my visit. There are a few grocery aisles with an incredibly random selec...

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...

Sea Bright Supermarket & Liquor Owner: unknown Opened:  2011 under current ownership Cooperative:  none Location:  1160 Ocean Ave, Sea Bright, NJ Photographed:  January 2021 We are out on the peninsula occupied by Monmouth Beach, Sea Bright, and Sandy Hook (from south to north), really the northernmost shore resort area. It's an extremely narrow strip of land -- a mere 1200 feet or less than a quarter mile wide at Sea Bright Supermarket -- and this store is the only grocery store on the peninsula. The 11,000 square foot store, though, is more a liquor store with some grocery items. At some point in its life, it had been a Foodtown, but it's long since been independent. I think it's fairly likely there was previously a Foodtown sign in place of where the Supermarket & Liquor sign is today. It's hard to tell exactly the store's history, but I can say that the right half of the store is about 8000 square feet, extending much farther back than the left half wh...

It's time for our next (northern) Jersey Shore group! Unfortunately this is as far south as we'll be getting on the east coast of New Jersey, though we'll go a bit farther south when we get out to the western part of the state. We're going to pass along the coast through Port Monmouth, Atlantic Highlands, Sea Bright, Long Branch, West Long Branch, Belmar, and Brick with a relatively small group of just over a week's worth of stores. However, we'll double up on a few days so we see more than one store a day. As we can see in the map above, we're actually heading back up to north of the  Holmdel  area, then continuing all along the shore to Brick, which is about 20 miles south of  Tinton Falls  where we ended the last group. All of our coverage is going to be in Monmouth County, except for Brick Township which is in Ocean County. But for now, we'll be going back to the very northeastern part of Monmouth County tomorrow, for not one but  two  Foodtowns tomo...