RED BANK: WOMAN GETS $850K IN LAWSUIT
By JOHN T. WARD
A Rumson woman settled a trip-and-fall lawsuit against the Red Bank SuperFoodtown for $850,000, the New Jersey Law Journal reported Monday.
RED BANK: TIME-LAPSE OF VANISHING BREAD
NJ.com video reporter and Red Bank resident Brian Donohue and a colleague set up time-lapse cameras in the bread aisle of two supermarkets, including the SuperFoodtown on Broad Street, to capture a slice of the predictable, pre-blizzard stockup on staples Friday. Enjoy. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
RED BANK: FOODTOWN SCENE OF ASSAULT
An employee of the Red Bank Foodtown wound up in jail after a fist-swinging episode at the store’s customer service desk Saturday afternoon, police said.
Store employee Charles Bennett, 56, of Ambassador Drive, first assaulted a management-level employee and then took on police officers in full view of shoppers, Chief Darren McConnell tells redbankgreen.
SHREWSBURY: JOB LOT STORE OPENS
After a vacancy of more than five years, a former supermarket on Newman Springs Road in Shrewsbury has a new tenant. Ocean State Job Lot, a closeout retailer based in Rhode Island, opened Tuesday morning. The store is temporarily accepting cash only. Here’s our April story on the company. (Photo by John T. Ward. Click to enlarge)
SHREWSBURY: JOB LOTTER RENTS GIANT SPACE
Ocean State Job Lot will open its first New Jersey store in the building, which was vacated by Foodtown in August, 2008.
By JOHN T. WARD
After a vacancy of more than five years, a former supermarket on Newman Springs Road in Shrewsbury has landed a tenant.
Ocean State Job Lot, a closeout retailer based in Rhode Island, plans to open its first New Jersey store at the location, company store planner Jocelyn Bromley tells redbankgreen.
WHERE HAVE I SEEN THIS?
Welcome to 2014 and a new year of Where Have I Seen This? Let’s get things going with a brand spankin’ shiny visual located on redbankgreen turf. Do you know Where? If so, or you’d like to venture a guess, please email the answer to wherehaveiseenthis@redbankgreen.com.
As for last week’s photo…
RED BANK: MEAT AND TATERS IN THE LARDER
It’s crockpot season, and the PieHole Larder spotted a meat-and-potatoes deal for this week. (Photo by Jim Willis. Click to enlarge)
By JIM WILLIS
With holiday shopping and decorating for Christmas eating into PieHole‘s precious cooking time, we’re ready for some easy crockpot meals.
This week’s PieHole Larder – yes, this is the first you’re hearing about our new feature about unbeatable food bargains – brings you a pair of specials that go together like meat and potatoes.
Because, well, they are meat and potatoes.
JUANITO’S OPENS MEGABODEGA ON WEST SIDE
Juanito’s International Marqueta is the latest in a line of food-related businesses owner Juan Torres has created in town. Below, the store’s placeta-style checkout station. (Click to enlarge)
By JOHN T. WARD
Leading a visitor through the aisles of his new supermarket on Red Bank’s West Side, Juan Torres wended his way past employees busily stocking shelves and freezers just hours before he unceremoniously opened the store to shoppers Tuesday.
Reminiscent of midsized neighborhood markets long ago displaced by supermarkets, Juanito’s International Marqueta features four short aisles and two longer aisles stocked with dry goods, many of them grouped together by nation of origin: Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and elsewhere, Torres said.
Likewise, along a wall of freezers, food is also grouped by nation of origin, including Salvadoran corn tamales known as pupusas.
The groupings, Torres said, were done to make shopping easier for Latino immigrants as well as non-Hispanic shoppers looking for beans, sardines and other products they used in their home countries, he said.
“People here take taxis to Long Branch to get ingredients,” he said. “Now, they can walk here.”
BROTHERS TAKE TOP HOME-DECORATING SWAG
First place: 14 Catherine Street, home of Patrick Hussey & Family. (Click to enlarge)
Let the maple syrup flow!
The winners of Red Bank’s annual Holiday Home Decorating Contest have been selected, with winning households taking home half-gallon jugs of maple syrup made in Vermont by Jules Prown, father of event co-sponsor David Prown of Prowns Home Improvements.
And this year, the top two winners are brothers who own homes on the West Side.
LONGTIME LEGISLATOR JOE AZZOLINA, 84
Joe Azzolina at Red Bank’s centennial picnic in May, 2008. (Click to enlarge)
Middletown’s Joe Azzolina, a supermarket executive who who served in Trenton as both a state Senator and Assembly member and was instrumental in bringing the battleship U.S.S. New Jersey to berth in the state, died Thursday at the age of 84, the Asbury Park Press reports.
Azzolina, who had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, died at 6:10p at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, where he had been for several months, his son, Joseph Azzolina Jr., told the newspaper.
He had served three separate stints as an Assemblyman, totaling 22 years in that chamber, as well as a two-year term in the state Senate, according to a Wikipedia entry.
Among the stores under the umbrella of the family-owned Food Circus company, which he ran for decades, was the Super Foodtown in Red Bank.
GROUP SEEKS FAIR TRADE CERT IN RED BANK
Bags like this one, and Fair Trade products, may become more prevalent in Red Bank. (Photo by Dustin Racioppi)
By DUSTIN RACIOPPI
Red Bank has held several appellations in its storied century-plus on the Navesink, both flattering and blunt. The infamous ‘Dead Bank’ comes to mind, but has since been supplanted, in many circles, by ‘Hip City.’
It’s also known, if you pay close enough attention to the signs when entering the borough, as a Tree City USA.
Amber Graves wants to add another tag to the borough.
“Red Bank should not only be known as Hip City, but also as a Fair Trade town,” she told the borough council on Monday, as part of an effort by a group to win national certification from a group called Fair Trade Towns USA.
RUNAWAY CAR SMACKS SUPERMARKET ENTRY
The vehicle plowed through two parking lots and struck the Foodtown entrance without hitting any cars or pedestrians Friday night. (Photo courtesy of Kevin Maude)
A 19-year-old Middletown man “left a pretty good path of destruction” before crashing his car into an entrance of the Red Bank SuperFoodtown Friday night in an incident police say was a “miracle” in that no pedestrians were struck.