There’s no news yet on the supermarket to be named later for Montclair’s Lackawanna Plaza, but Clifton got some big news this week when Stew Leonard, Jr. shared that a new Stew Leonard’s store would come to Clifton on the site of the former Seasons, a kosher supermarket, in the Styertowne Shopping Center.
“My family and I just made a deal to have a new Stew Leonard’s take over the Seasons market in Clifton. We are excited because we’ll be able to sell both food and wine in the store as we plan to move Stew Leonard’s Wines & Spirits of Clifton into the new location,” said Stew Leonard, Jr. “We will start construction this summer and will open in 2024. We are still in the process of designing the store and hope to share more details soon.”
The Clifton location would be the eighth Stew Leonard supermarket and the second in New Jersey. Meghan Bell, director of public relations for Stew Leonard’s, shared that the Paramus location is 80,000 square feet.
Stew Leonard’s began as a small dairy store founded in 1969 with just seven employees. Today, Stew Leonard’s is still family-owned and operated, but has grown to become a business exceeding $550 million in sales with more than 3,000 employees. There are also eight independently owned wine stores that license the name Stew Leonard’s located in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.
Dubbed the “Disneyland of Dairy Stores” by the New York Times, Stew Leonard’s is known for its farm fresh foods (eighty percent of products sold in store are fresh – brought in daily or prepared directly in-store) and as a fun shopping experience for families, complete with costumed characters, scheduled entertainment, petting zoo and animatronics throughout the stores.