As I wrote my good buddy yesterday when I happened in to have a look around the place “Meet the new store, same as the old store, don’t get convenience-d again.” My friendly neighborhood Quick Check, which used to sit at a busy corner of Market Street in the Allwood section of Clifton, closed last week to reopen a mere few days later as a Quick Foods store. And not much has changed.
There are the usual bunch of coffee dispensers, the sandwich-making station, shelves stocked with take-away food items—even some still Quick Check products—an ATM machine (granted moved to the front entrance of the store) the back refrigerator cases. Pretty much this is the local convenience store we all know and love, proving that the more things change the more they stay the same, and that suburban slugs like me are not as brand loyal as we are lazy to go further afield for a cup of Joe than we have to.
The skuttle butt on the street is that Quick Check closed their Market Street store as they have a few others, because they are concentrating on locations that have gas pumps adjacent. You’ve no doubt seen the proliferation of these kind of spots, be they Wa-of-the Wa’s or Quick Checks, sporting a bunch of gas pumps and even electric car charging stations next to the food store. The spot here in Clifton sits next to a big parking lot, but not big enough to support gas pumps. In fact, the Market Street Quick Check (not to be confused with a “Market Street Hero,” for those Marillion fans among you) opened in one small section of what is a big building that also supports and restaurant and a dentist office. When I was a kid, the entire building housed an A&P, but you could only shop there during the day as electricity had not been invented yet (I joke, I joke).
So, at the spot where a Quick Check had been for quite some years now sits a Quick Foods. I am sure, in a few months I’ll forget the staff, the few specific interior nuisances the old store had, not care I am not using the Quick Check app I hardly even used anyway not having my phone with me most times I stopped into the store so quickly (see how I did that there? with the word quick talking about the ‘Quick’ Check?!) and not care much at all that things have changed.
