At the end of August, after the merger of Royal Ahold and the Delhaize Group, corporate owners of Stop & Shop and Hannaford supermarkets, the Stop & Shop location in New Paltz made its transition to a Tops Friendly Market.
The Stop & Shop store and other supermarkets in the region were sold to satisfy antitrust concerns.
According to fourth-year psychology major and Tops Market employee Sal Mazzella, previous employees of Stop & Shop were offered their old jobs back, but many declined.’
“We kept our old contracts, but lost some of the discounts and other benefits that we used to have with Stop & Shop,” he said.
Mazzella said the physical store has not changed much as far as layout, although the products are slightly different.
Third-year psychology major Emi Lewis has shopped at the new Tops Friendly Market and said that her shopping experience was similar to that of when she used to shop at Stop & Shop in the same location.
Lewis also said the new store was organized and the staff was very helpful if she needed help finding something.
Mazzella said that shoppers can expect a similar environment to that of Stop & Shop, but that it will take a few weeks for the store to really get going.
According to Lewis, although the store looked slightly different, it was organized relatively the same.
“I definitely remember going down an aisle looking for a certain object expecting it to just be there, and I thought it wouldn’t be there but it seems as though they kept the items in the same aisles for the convenience of the people living in New Paltz,” she said.
Lewis said that she will definitely continue to do more shopping at Tops Friendly Market in the future.