1301 W. Skippack Pike
Welcome to the Blue Bell McCaffrey's!
Welcome back! Our grand finale for this group of stores is the Blue Bell McCaffrey's. The enclosed Clover Mall opened here in 1978 along with Clover and Clemens Markets. In 1990, Clemens relocated into the former mall space. The store was one of six Clemens to be sold to SuperFresh in 2006, and closed during the A&P bankruptcy in 2015 (one of only two acquired Clemens to make it to the end of SuperFresh, the other being New Hope). It became the fifth location of McCaffrey's, a small family-owned upscale supermarket chain, on July 22, 2016. Let's take a look around this beautiful store.
We enter down a hallway into floral, complete with a really cool water feature.
Up next is Java Jim's coffee and cafe, a staple of McCaffrey's.
The first fresh department shoppers see is the stunning bakery. All of the McCaffrey's stores have different decor, and this one is far and away my favorite.
The small service seafood counter is up next. In the Clemens days, this was the bakery and the current bakery was the deli. McCaffrey's doesn't have much of a deli.
Exceptional is a good word to describe the produce department, located across from bakery and seafood. Dairy is in the aisle behind this, and uses the back of the fake window signage.
The cheese and butcher shops are located in the back left corner as a segue into the rest of the store. The butcher counter is one of the few things in this store that is mostly unchanged from Clemens, though the decor is obviously new.
Aisle 5 has paper products and general merchandise. As The Market Report said in their tour of this store, while the aisles are clean and streamlined, the focus is obviously on the fresh departments.
Packaged meats and lots of prepared foods are in the back of the store.
Beer and wine are in the back right corner, with their own registers and exit out to the side of the store.
There's also a seating area, which is enclosed but has windows looking out to the frozen department.
The frozen department in question, located in aisle 10. McCaffrey's must love ice cream, because they have a lot of it!
Ten checkouts and a small customer service island round out the interior of the store.
Other Images of Interest
Street View Images
2017
If you didn't already notice, one of the stores in the strip is still called Clemens Cleaners!
2011
Thankfully, McCaffrey's got rid of that unsightly cart corral. By the way, you can click here to see PlazaACME's photos of the store both while it was SuperFresh and during the transition to McCaffrey's.
Nearby competition
1.8 miles away: GIANT of Blue Bell
We've now toured all the nearby competition. The Blue Bell GIANT opened in 1995 and has the chain's latest decor inside. You can tour the store here.
2.5 miles away: Weis of East Norriton
The East Norriton Weis opened on June 16, 2012 in a former Genuardi's store which operated from 1998 until Safeway sold off most of the chain in 2012.
3.1 miles away: Acme of East Norriton
We began this journey almost a month ago with the East Norriton Acme, which opened on October 20 in a former ShopRite store.
Well, what did you think? I loved McCaffrey's, and I think if there was one near me I would shop there at least somewhat regularly. We're done with the Norristown area for now, but I'd love to come back sometime in the future and check out even more stores. Next week, we're headed back to a place that is very familiar to the blog: South Jersey! See you then, and have a great Thanksgiving! The Retail Connection: Exceptional. Every Day.
Really nice store! Love the interior, and it's great to see the Clemens exterior design remaining.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason your posts never show up in my Blogger reading list, or return an error page when they do. I need to go back and catch up on all I've missed!
Thank you! It is definitely a nice store, and I like the Clemens design too.
DeleteThat's strange. I don't know why that could be happening. I'll see if it's something I can fix. Thanks for reading anyway!
First off, thanks to you two for informing me that a reading list exists. I'm gonna have to work on using that! I was going to each blog I wanted to read manually once a week or so...
ReplyDeleteI love this store too, and the decor is wonderful! I'm not sure, though, that I would say they don't have much of a deli. The deli is between prepared foods and sushi, but doesn't have its own sign. In fact, it's pretty much directly under the sushi sign...
https://maps.app.goo.gl/8cz6vaoiXYre3gpU7
And thanks too for linking to my post! You're welcome to refer to me as Zachary if you prefer, but The Market Report works too :)
Lol, I think we can both thank Retail Retell for that, as I didn't know about it either! I don't know how, since I'm sure I've seen that button every day for months...
DeleteI was looking back on these pictures a few days ago and realized there pretty much was a deli, as you say. I guess there being no signage for it threw me off. Though, as PlazaACME's pictures show, when this was Clemens there was signage for pretty much nothing.
No problem, Zachary! ;)