Welcome back to Doylestown! We covered this store previously in 2018, with footage of the store from when it closed in 2009. However, with that post being one of my earliest on the blog, and rather vague and full of holes, I wanted to revisit this store again to give it justice.
Before I get into the store tour, let's talk about what's happening to the space nowadays. For one, there's a deteriorating SuperFresh sign around back, which was simply painted over by GIANT. However, that sign may not be there for much longer. Waters Retail Group, the landlord of the center Cross Keys Place, has a site plan that shows that GIANT will be moving to the former Kmart space, and another retailer will replace the current GIANT, which leaves a lot to be questioned about that proposed retailer. There's a possibility it may be subdivided too, which may cause more concerns about what exactly will be left of the SuperFresh when it comes time for construction.
It's still unclear what the SuperFresh would have looked like when it first opened. Many places say that it started out as a Futurestore model, however, the rest of the center resembles more of the Sav-A-Center model like stores in Pennsville and Bellmawr.
For those who aren't too familar with GIANT, it's owned by the same company (Ahold-Delhaize) that is a supermarket conglomerate in the Northeast, which also consists of Stop & Shop, Martin's, Giant-MD, Food Lion, and Hannaford.
Here in Doylestown, this GIANT isn't necessarily the supermarket of choice. In addition to ACME, which we covered, Doylestown is also home to a Weis Market, Altomonte's Italian Market, McCaffrey's SimplyFresh (a local SuperValu affiliate), and a Wegmans just a few miles down Route 611 in Warrington.
GIANT kept the low late-80s drop ceiling here from SuperFresh, but trimmed down everything else to the bare walls before moving in here. Sadly, throughout the whole store, I was unable to find any remnants of the original layout.
One thing that I've always liked about GIANT is that a good portion of their stores still have their 90s look, as seen here. This means that in addition to somewhat tacky decor and big lighting systems, you also have features like this back-lit store directory seen in the middle of the photo here. While I doubt anyone uses that anymore, it's a nice touch. I for one miss it in my local GIANT just outside of the Lehigh Valley.
I'm not entirely sure what was originally in this corner here, however I have a feeling it was the original floral section. GIANT has since added their own Beer Cafe area.
For those who aren't familiar with Pennsylvania's liquor laws, basically the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) has said that they will not give liquor licenses to supermarkets to sell beer exclusively; citing that it must either be a restaurant or a bar. (This is why you'll also never find standalone liquor stores in Pennsylvania, unless they are under PLCB's brand of Fine Wine & Good Spirits) So in order to get around this roadblock, supermarket chains across the state have purchased liquor licenses and found a loophole in the law. Since most supermarkets nowadays have a prepared foods section, chains are able to get away with selling liquor - as long as they put in a seating area of some sort - and then say "oh, well we do serve food, and we do have a seating area... so it counts, right?"
While Wegmans was the first to capitalize on this loophole in Pennsylvania, GIANT is leading the way with these Beer cafés right now, I believe nearly 50% of their stores in Pennsylvania have them now.
The cases and lighting have been replaced since SuperFresh left.
Pennsylvania readers: Does anyone remember the old GIANT website back in the day that had all of these logos? Those were good days. Before GIANT got homogenized like the rest of Ahold...
Doylestown is a particularly upscale area, so GIANT has a service Meat and Seafood counter to boot! I have to admit, on the day that I shopped here (these photos were taken prior to COVID in 2019) I had purchased some fresh fish and scallops, and they held up quite well. It's a shame more stores have phased out the seafood counters now, I think they're a great addition to a supermarket.
You can see where the nice spotlights fade off here, and the normal lighting and grocery aisles begin.
When I first saw that these aisles had lighting, I was absolutely thrilled. It's like the 90s all over again! Too bad these aren't A&P's wood-slat lit aisle toppers... oh well, you can't always get what you want.
While I was shopping, crews were working on (I believe) expanding the backrooms here to make way for a GIANT Direct office; which is a holding area for pickup and local delivery orders.
I have a feeling some shelves here are left over from SuperFresh. Not many supermarkets (especially in the last decade) still use these tiered shelving systems, where here the bottom shelf of soda is easily accessible from the top.
A spacious meat department!
This store does not have a Pharmacy. When the center was first built with the SuperFresh, the junior anchor tenant was (and still is) a CVS Pharmacy... and with the Kmart at the end of the center also having a Pharmacy, it would be a bit redundant to have one in-store here as well. I have a feeling that will change when GIANT moves to its new spot in the former Kmart.
Seasonal is squeezed in the back wall here between Customer Service and the Dairy aisle.
Finally, a nice wide dairy aisle! (I am writing this as I just came back from another supermarket that will appear on the blog, and let's just say that it had a quite cramped dairy aisle. Oh well...)
Milk is under somewhat of an alcove here; maybe left over from SuperFresh? I feel like this screams late-80s supermarket design!
Looking back towards the Produce Department here, you can see that this store is not exactly large by modern-day standards; it's around 40,000 square feet.
...and that wraps it up for this week's store tour! Check back next week for yet another store in this area... did I mention it's also revisited? Stay tuned!
IDK if you ever got to the replacement store, but it also doesn't have a pharmacy. I'm guessing CVS has a no-compete clause in their lease which forbids it.
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