ShopRite Underwhelms in Edgewater?

Location: Location: 481 River Road, Edgewater, NJ

Quick post here with just a few photos of the ShopRite in Edgewater. The store was covered over on The Market Report on grand opening day. I was finally able to pop in and take a look at the place. For starters, we see the grand opening banners and flags having taken a beating from the weekend storm. 

Overall I found the store to be quite pleasant. Turned out ShopRite only had 4 days to freshen the place up and get it all stocked and they were able to do a decent job in that time. The store is clean and bright. The crowds have certainly dissipated since opening day, in fact, I was surprised to see so few shoppers here on a weekday afternoon. 

Not surprisingly, floral was downsized a bit and not merchandised as nicely as ACME. 

The Asian Bar was open again but at only about half capacity and the offerings were not looking so good.  

Hot food bar apparently getting shut down at 2:00 pm. ACME's fried chicken was a huge draw here. 

Cool vintage ShopRite logo on the wall! When I took this picture, there was a big curfuffle going on back here. A customer was ranting and raving about the bad selection of chicken. The meat employee there was trying to diffuse the situation and help her but finally gave up. 

Bread is back in its origianl Pathmark alcove! Although this space used to be divided between the bread alcove and a Bank of America. New freezers added here as well which has allowed ShopRite to offer a much bigger selection of frozen foods than ACME. I was impressed by a lot of the items that are being carried here. A big increase in healthier/natrual options, more so than I have seen at other Inserra locations.  

The awful ice cream freezers remain. You can never see it and often have to bust your pint out of a block of ice. 

One huge improvement is the addition of new milk cases. Pathmark's very old, open cases are finally gone. 

So everyone is always saying how expensive ACME is and how much better the prices are at ShopRite. I'm not one of those people. Here's an example of something I buy regularly. ACME sells this for $4.99 and had it on sale ALL summer long for $3.99. ShopRite at $5.99 which is the highest price I've seen.

Two new registers added where ACME's Drive Up and Go area was located. Does ShopRite not do pick up orders? I didn't see a staging area anywhere in this store. The remaining registres are left over from ACME...

Where is everyone? Several times the cashiers were waiting at the front of their registers to guide shoppers to their lanes. There seemed to be a decent number of shoppers around the store but not nearly the volume I thought a new ShopRite would bring in. The store was also overstaffed, which gave the impression of more shoppers than were actually here. A lot of corporate types walking around and greeting customers too. 

A couple new shopping cart corrals with a bunch of old ACME corrals around... 

What I found so interesting about shopping here is that a huge amount of ACME's staff has remained on with the conversion to ShopRite. Customer service, produce staff and cashiers all from ACME. Glad to see they were able to stay! The last days of ACME were pretty depressing with everyone hanging around with not much to do after the inventory was depleted. 

Reports are the store will soon undergo a two-year remodel. We'll have to see if that actually happens. With the amount of competition in the area, the need for a traditional supermarket is not what used to be when Pathmark opened here nearly 30 years ago. And coming soon is... Sprouts! They have officially announced their new location at the Edgwater Harbor Shopping Center. It had previously been reported that they would be opening in this center, which was an impossibility, as there were no vacancies. Sprouts will be taking over the old Home Goods and construction is already well underway. Personally, I couldn't be more excited. Sprouts is one of my favorite stores and is only now coming to North Jersey. I am concerned about the parking lot over there. It is not configured for a food store! It was overly congested just with the Home Goods and it was a huge relief when they relocated to Edgewater Commons.