Location: 937 Lincoln Avenue, Glen Rock, NJ
Classic A&P photos sent in by GUman for our viewing pleasure. He also sent a third picture of what the store looks like today but the photo was unfortunately corrupted and could not be used. Not to worry, there isn't much to see these days. The location remains in the A&P family but has been down graded to Food Basics. The banner arrived on the scene with much fanfare in the early 2000's but failed pretty miserably. Glen Rock is one of only eleven Food Basics still open today. I tried to get some google street views to share but the trees along the sidewalk are much bigger these days and completely block the view. We're far better off remembering it as an A&P anyway. Even a green one, which was always my least favorite kind.
Now on to a second "Bonus Store" of the month...
I serviced this store for a while as a DSD vendor. What a tiny store! It was closed up when the big Midland Park store opened (Midland Park and Wyckoff's older stores also closed, with Wyckoff holding off a little longer, but severely cutting back on their fresh offerings at the end). The manager from the small Midland Park store went to Wyckoff, and the Wyckoff manager went to the big new Midland Park store. The manager of the Glen Rock store was a kindly old Scottish man who hated interstates, so when they transferred him to the Route 22 store in Wayne, he always drove the back roads.
ReplyDeleteAt some point between the first and second pictures they walled off the liquor store from the grocery store. The liquor store remained after the grocery store part closed. Glad to see it came back to life, if even as a Food Basics. I left the area in 1999, so that's my frame of reference.
If you ever get to Glen Rock, you have got to go to Kilroy's Wonder Market (also online @ kilroyswondermarket.com). What an odd store. No bigger than a convenience store (I heard it was once one, but cannot confirm). They later built a warehouse in the parking lot (the basement is also a warehouse of sorts with a series of conveyor belts and rollers). I un-fondly remember pushing U-Boats of product from the warehouse to the store, and sometimes losing them after hitting a dip in the asphalt.
Hi,My Dad managed the Finast/Kings/Pantry Pride in Ridgewood back in the 70!s. Mr Kilroy was a good friend of our family. my Dad turned down and offer from Mr Kilroy to Manage this Foodtown. Instead a recomended a friend of his from Finast, who stayted for years. The A@P in Midland Park was a great store in the 60!s and 70!s./ Kilroy also owned the old Acme in Franlyn Lakes. It was sold to Panzenhagen Foodtown and closed a few years latter. Thanks for the trip down memory lane
DeleteThe old Midland Park A&P became a Sears Hardware a few years after the new A&P opened but the A&P Liquor Store remained next door....The A&P Liquor Store remained up unitl about 2007 when it moved inside of the A&P...Today the liquor store is a Dunkin' Donuts
ReplyDeleteThe old Wyckoff future store still remains empty but is expeted to be torn down as ShopRite bought the land a few years back....However Stop & Shop which is only feet away has been holding up construction with several law suits.
Here is a link to the most recent Stop & Shop and ShopRite battle: http://www.northjersey.com/shopping/events/172599361_Wyckoff_residents_weigh_in_on_ShopRite_application.html
Interestingly enough, I'm almost positive Acme had a store a few miles from here west of the railroad tracks in Ridgewood in the late 70's until early 80's maybe? It's now a Whole Foods doing extremely well and they did a great job of restoring & preserving the pitched style roof...
ReplyDeleteRegarding the A&P in Wyckoff, it was originally built in the mid-70's as a Stop&Shop and MediMart combo shopping center. When Stop&Shop pulled out of New Jersey in the late 70's, A&P took over a number of those store leases only to give some back up when Stop&Shop re-entered New Jersey with Royal Ahold behind them. Stop&Shop held the lease to the Wyckoff store even after A&P left in the early 90's and when Ahold/Stop&Shop took over the Grand Union in Wyckoff in early 2000, they managed to keep that old A&P empty until the lease ran out and they were off the hook for that property... and wisely Inserra S/R picked up the property and there is no way Stop&Shop/Ahold is going to stop Inserra from putting a store on that location and competing with them.
Great post, GUman. I was going to mention that S&S held the lease, but you beat me to the punch.
ReplyDeleteIt is such a treat when this site turns into A&P Style.
ReplyDeleteIs there a reason why this store didn't do so well and had to be converted to a Food Basics?
Max, I think the opening of the Whole Foods back in the mid 90's and A&P's "great renewal" project that shelved smaller stores made this store go away as a traditional A&P... as you can see from the second photo, in the late 80's A&P was reformatting smaller stores in good "money" areas to Food Bazaar's which were supposed to be similar to Food Emporiums shortly after A&P bought that chain. They converted several stores, including this Glen Rock location as well as Westfield, NJ, Montvale, NJ and others in metro NY and CT... they rethought the Food Bazaar name and just used A&P Food Market, and then suddenly this store closed in the early 90's. It was a pretty busy store at that time so it was kinda odd they closed it. I guess they held the lease and decided rather than compete with Whole Foods and Kings who were strong in that Ridgewood (money) area, they would just pull from the Hawthorne, Paterson side, which are just blocks away and go with a lower price format. As Acmestyle said, that banner is just about finished except for a few inner city locations.
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