It must say something ominous about the economy when supermarkets shut down. In my area, in the broader range, we have lost a Pathmark and two Genuardi’s, and now the local Superfresh just up the road is going away after years of happy commerce. What’s up with that?
The parking lot at Superfresh was always crowded. It was also the market with the biggest selection of three local stores (the others being Acme and Thriftway). Nobody can understand this move by parent company A&P. We certainly don’t want to lose the personal service of checkers we have known for a long time, nor the store’s own brands we have turned to.
Apparently customer loyalty doesn’t matter.
It may well be that the corporate bottom line requires them to shutter perfectly good store to save money to pay the pensions for everybody who has retired. Hopefully they’re not squirreling away funds for marlin fishing in Florida*.
The market takes up the biggest space in the plaza and used to house a Clover store before the collapse of its parent company, Strawbridge & Clothier. In fact, the plaza tore down the original Superfresh location, built a bank on that pad and moved them into the larger store, where it thrived.
The shopping center, which has evolved over the decades, has been almost fully occupied until now, with a Tuesday Morning store newly arrived. Now it looks like the entire site will be blighted unless some new tenant takes over the space.
I’m hoping that the Acme down the road will take it over; then another market like Bottom Dollar can move into that vacated space. Since I brought it up, it probably won’t happen. The empty Pathmark and Genuardi’s still sit like open wounds in barren patches of parking lots.
Who knows where the shoppers have gone to fulfill their basic needs. Maybe the Wegman’s stores have absorbed their business, as they have sprouted almost as fast as Wal-Mart.
When the grocer leaves town, the town goes hungry.
*(Marlin fishing in Florida is a symbol for rich retirement).
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