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I was just having the conversation with a friend from Tennessee who spent time in Atlanta also. I grew up in Northeast PA and went to school in Bethlehem. Two things about Jersey that surprised us both - horrible grocery stores and horrendous movie theaters.
One thing against us in NJ is that many of these stores were built in the 50s & 60s when in other expanding parts of the country they were built in the 80s & 90s. Cheapass companies just spruce up their dingy, small existing supermarkets instead and make NJ'ans lump it.
Pathmark usually ranked worst in supermarket surveys I've viewed. I agree
The stores with the five highest ratings were:
Wegmans
Trader Joe’s
Publix
Fareway Stores
Costco
The stores that received the lowest ratings were:
Pathmark
Wal-Mart Supercenter
Shaw’s
A&P
Jewel-Osco
Another thing that's common in other regions is that their (already nicer and complete with beer and wine in every store) supermarkets are often open 24 hours. You won't find such things in good ole' NJ... There are even towns that make the all night CVS stores close their grocery aisles at 10pm.
Not true! I had a 24-hour A&P (and that had a liquor store inside) when I lived in Midland Park. I was a little put out when I moved down here to Monmouth County and found that none of the supermarkets are 24 hours, not even in summer when there are more people around. Not that it's sparsely populated or anything here in winter. I was just telling someone this the other day. Really surprised that not one is open all night, even on Route 35.
ShopRite has expanded to MD. My initial reaction was yuch! But at least it's better than Pantry Pride or Foodtown.
Pantry Pride still exists? I thought they went out decades ago! (Though Wikipedia suggests the corporate shell eventually bought and became Revlon... weird)
Pantry Pride still exists? I thought they went out decades ago! (Though Wikipedia suggests the corporate shell eventually bought and became Revlon... weird)
If it did, I would be surprised. That store was simply gross, but I recall Foodtown being worse. The most disgusting grocery I've every been in would be Winn-Dixie.
I find the old, tiny Shop-Rite in West Caldwell very interesting architecturally. It seems to have an Asian theme, complete with matching phone booths! Even the aisle numbers have Chinese or Japanese calligraphy (I completely forgot to take any photos of them. I'll do that next time).
I find the old, tiny Shop-Rite in West Caldwell very interesting architecturally. It seems to have an Asian theme, complete with matching phone booths! Even the aisle numbers have Chinese or Japanese calligraphy (I completely forgot to take any photos of them. I'll do that next time).
I think the most amazing thing is that they still have two phone booths!
With the huge percentage of people carrying cell phones nowadays, the use of phone booths has dropped to the point that Verizon has removed most of them. Perhaps these booths are owned and operated by a third-tier (rip-off) telecommunications company.
I used to buy my groceries there in college. Really bizarre-in my current life I actually ended up having a colleague who went on to work for Wakefern (parent company of Shop-Rite) who told me that the owner of that particular location just was really into Asian culture (but not Asian himself) and wanted to decorate the store that way.
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