Getting here is less of a circus for many customers, says Joe Azzolina Sr.
By LINDA G. RASTELLI
Local supermarket magnate Joe Azzolina Sr. has purchased the Stop & Shop on Newman Springs Road in Shrewsbury and is reconfiguring it into another Food Circus Super Foodtown, much like the one he owns about half a mile away in Red Bank.
“Trying to get into Red Bank from (Route) 520 is like driving into hell,” the former state Assemblyman tells redbankgreen. Residents of Tinton Falls, Shrewsbury and Lincroft — as well as from Holmdel and Colts Neck — had asked him to open a store more convenient to where they live, he said.
“We weren’t drawing enough business in our Red Bank store from those areas,” he said. “It was to hard to get to our Red Bank store.”
The Stop & Shop wasn’t doing the amount of business it had hoped to at its present location, he said, but he’s confident that after remerchandising the store, he’ll be able to expand the store’s market and sell more perishables than it did in the past.
“It will mostly be the same departments, but we’ll reconfigure the store our way,” he noted, adding that all the Stop & Shop employees were welcome to work for him.
The store will be closed for eight or nine days after the end of this month and then reopen on Dec. 8th as a Foodtown, he said. This will bring the total number of Foodtowns owned by his company, Food Circus Supermarkets, Inc., of Middletown, to 11.
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, and none of the paperwork has yet been posted on the Monmouth County Clerk’s website.
Is it going to be like the old welfare foodtown? Where Spirits now stands?
The staff at Stop and Shop is wonderful, helpful and professional. I hope they stay on
I go to Stop & Shop to avoid the disgustingly filthy Foodtown. Guess I'll have to start shopping at A&P or Pathmark.
Apparently what goes around comes around. I've been in the store a few times and it always seems empty.
Now we just need Joe to take over the SmACME in FH and all will be right in the grocery world.
Is the existing foodtown on Broad going to close?
So many mixed emotions about Foodtown.
Moon is the best cashier in Monmouth County and they have a better selection than most places. The people in general are very friendly.
On the flip side, you could not pay me to eat the Seafood from that place. Putrid and expensive previously farmed raised shrimp from Bangladesh does not have me power rolling my cart to the back of the store. And every time I buy a lemon it seems like it turns green and white the next day. I'll give them a D+ in produce. While they do a nice job with the meats, they can rarely compete with the other shops when it comes to price.
For all moaning though, I have a ton of Green Points.
See now folks, this is fun and useful. Democrats and Republicans all need to eat. Maybe Gary and Sunny can head over to Super Stop and Shop and hug it out. Only God does not need to eat.