Friday, March 29, 2024

Acme | Pennsville, NJ

 

251 N. Broadway

Welcome to the Pennsville Acme!

For the first time since December, we're in New Jersey! We're going to be seeing two Salem County grocery stores, beginning with the Acme of Pennsville. This center originally opened in the early 60s with anchors Acme and W.T. Grant, which later expanded into a Grant City. The store then closed in 1976 and became Kmart from 1977 to 1996. Acme moved from their longtime spot at the other end of the center into this space in 1998, opening a new store sporting the Red White & Blue decor. The store later received an extensive remodel to Premium Fresh & Healthy 1.0 around 2007, then again in more recent years to Quality Built. Let's see what's in store at the Pennsville Acme!


This Acme has quite a strange layout, but by far the oddest aspect is the entrance/exit. There is only one entrance on the left side of the building, which shoppers enter and then walk through a long hallway, then turn right into the main store. This store has a flipped layout, with produce and bakery on the front wall and checkouts being on the left side of the building.



Here we see Pennsville's Freshest Produce Market, with the windows under that signage looking out into the entry hallway.


The bakery follows behind the produce prep area.




Packaged meats are in the corner beyond the bakery, followed by the meat and seafood counter and corner deli. In the deli, both Red White & Blue flooring and PF&H backsplash are visible. Also, I promise I didn't follow that guy around the whole store.


Aisle 11, which has pet and paper products.



Breakfast meats are in the corner on the back (or right) side of the store, with dairy in aisle 14.


The Sav-On Pharmacy in the front corner retained its name, but had this interesting treatment with the Quality Built signage. It would've looked similar to this previously. I really like the look of this.


Checkouts, customer service, and floral run down the... left end! Finally not the front end! Although it basically is in this store.


Before we go, a view of the 60s Acme road sign that predates this store. In the background, you can see the sign for The Shops at Pennsville Center, which still mentions Sav-On. The Harbor Freight is in the old Acme.

Other Images of Interest

Street View Images

2023


The facade has an interesting design pattern with the bricks.

2018


No DriveUp & Go spots here. The red delicious apples were still present above the doors, though I believe PF&H was already gone by this time.

Nearby competition

2.2 miles away: Save A Lot of Pennsville


The only other grocery store in Pennsville is Save A Lot, which operates about two miles down the road in a former 70s A&P. The store later became a SuperFresh before relocating further down Broadway in 1990 to a new center, closing in 2008. We will be taking a quick look at this store next week.

That's all for this tour! Other than the odd layout, this seemed to be a very nice store, and I'm sure it does consistently great business as it's the only full-service supermarket in Pennsville (I believe the next closest one would be the Super G Market IGA across the river in New Castle, Delaware, which is another former A&P/SuperFresh of the same model as the Save A Lot). Thanks for reading, and come back next week when we're saving a lot! Happy Easter! Sincerely, The Retail Connection.










4 comments:

  1. Happy Easter! It's a shame that nobody bothered to remove the old apples above the doors!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You as well!

      At least they have actual fresh fruit up there now. I'm sure those apples had gone bad a long time ago.

      Delete

Memorabilia | Focal VHS Tape

  For our next piece of memorabilia, we're going to be looking at something that, at first glance, has nothing to do with retail. But an...