BY: Keith S. Shikowitz. Editor in Chief/Investigative Reporter
Customers are the lifeblood of businesses. Business owners are always looking for new customers, but they really appreciate the return customers. Many times, businesses will have a day where they have an event honoring and thanking them for their patronage. Shop Rite in Garnerville did just that on November 13, 2025. They had many vendors there handing out free samples of their goods and store employees going around with trays with samples of food.
Mayra Bonilla, a new manager here at Garnerville Shop Rite explained what the day was all about. “We’re hosting Customer Appreciation Day. We have vendors set up throughout the stores, giving out samples, and we have some free raffles for our customers.”
What are some of the prizes in the raffles?
“We have different baskets. We have 17 baskets and customers can enter the raffles for free.
Why did it start and who started it?
“This is something we do, once a year throughout all Inserra stores.
So, all the corporate stores, but not necessarily the non-corporate stores do this.
Another supervisor said, do this event in Inserra supermarkets. All stores owned by Inserra family, we do these.
How long have they been doing the customer appreciation day?
This event was held here from 3pm to 6pm. Inserra does this one store at a time every other week in all of their 23 stores once a year. They have stores in Passaic County, Bergen County, New Jersey and Rockland County New York.
The vendors were an important part of this event. I began my interviews with Joe PaDovano from Bimbo Bakery.
Tell me a little bit about Bimbo Bakeries.
“We have the bakeries from Entenmann’s, Thomas and Arnold, Stroehmann, May and Sara Lee Freihofer’s Bakery. We are, we are the largest baking company in the world. We deliver 5 days a week, every supermarket in the country and a lot of good people. In my case, right now I’m here 30 years and I was another 26 years with a different company.”
What brought you here today?
We’ve been invited to participate in this what they call a custom appreciation day. We promote and sample different items, new items, old items, something that fits the demographics of this area.
So, what we have here are new items from the Barcel division. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Barcel Takis. This is a new from the Bimbo cookies.
New Items from Bimbo at Shop Rite
“This all comes from Mexico for us. It’s a Hispanic label. We have been associated with Inserra for oh gosh, 56 years.”
These the only new products they were promoting on that day. They do bring new products in every Thursday. “We are going to make sure that we let every customer try them. We do this every Thursday in the course of a year. We have in the course of a year; we do this activity based in all the Inserra Shop Rites.”
Kyle Sansaricq, the Operations Manager, was there representing Scott’s Protein Balls which has been around 4 to 5 years and based out of Long Island, New York, Plainview. This is a plant-based, healthy snack, fresh out of the fridge, no preservatives, no dairy, no gluten, no soy.
“It’s a nice little on the go snack that could fit into your diet in a ton of different ways, you know, pre- and post-workout, could be a breakfast snack, could be a dessert. We like to say it’s a guilt-free snacking, gives you that sweet fix.
Some people say there is no such thing as guilt-free snacking. If anybody snacks, they’re guilty. They feel guilty.
“Yes but we promise these, we’ll give you that sweet craving with none of the bad stuff, very low sugar or no sugar, no preservatives, no chemicals, and as I said, no dairy, no gluten, no soy. We like to think we stick out on the shelves.”
“Long Island’s where we started, we got into, a regional, supermarket out there called King Cullen and, started, started small from there and just, built up. Now we’re in all the shop rights up here and we’re really all over trying to just scale up.”
They have 6 different flavors, and a few made with nuts as well as a few nut-free options, which he says are great for people with allergies. “Our nut-free options include brownie batter, confetti, and mint chocolate chip. Our options with nuts include peanut butter chocolate, our bestseller, peanut butter with coffee, and cinnamon almond butter. A nice little variety with different flavor profiles for really any type of preference.”
“We actually come with a nice story as well. We were born out of a breast cancer diagnosis of our founder. She was living off of protein bars and she went to a nutritionist who told her, you’ve got to cut out the bars. They’re full of sugar, they’re full of soy, they’re full of preservatives. So her husband Scott, hence the name, came up with a recipe that basically checked off all those boxes and can be a very good snack for people either looking for no soy, no chemicals, no sugar.”
They definitely had a variety of foods represented there. Stephanie San Martan was there for a company is called Wasabi Sushi which has been around for more than 10 years.
“We have a display of sushi back there.” Pointing to the area on the end of the deli counter. “We also have some new sauces we’re promoting. The kimchi and chili. These are made for kimchi which is a Korean dish, spicy coleslaw from Napa cabbage, a mix of onions, garlic.”
They had two sauces on display:
They have 40 types of sushi. This is a delivery store. We deliver here, but in other Shop Rite stores, we have the sushi bars, so we have chefs upstairs working there.
The customers were the reason for this celebration. So I spoke with some of them about their experiences with Shop Rite and the event that day.
Bob Lemula is from New City. He has a Shop Rite right there on main street, yet he came to Garnerville to shop. What brought him up here?
Sometimes we’ll go to the library over here, so that’ll put us in this proximity because if a book isn’t in one library it’ll be in the other.
What do you think about the customer appreciation?
“I think it’s a great thing. I think the store is a great store. I mean, it’s a gigantic store. I don’t want to disparage the, Stop and Shop by us or the ShopRite by us.
I said to him that I make the same mistake.
He replied, “Yeah, I do that all the time. I do it all the time and we’re right across the street from Stop and Shop, and Shop Rite and we can walk a quarter of a mile to the other one.
Shoprite is their normal shopping center. What is it about Shop Rite that keeps them coming back?
“I like the pricing. That’s why I’m here, for pricing. I was in the news business. That means you don’t get a lot of money. So, you’ve got to do the pricing. Yeah, well, you know what though, you get a lot of pleasure out of being a news reporter.”
What’s your favorite stuff that you like to get outside of necessities?
“You know, I just kind of go when something kind of grabs me. I have a nice vegetable market, fruits and vegetables. I like to hit that. I’m the ice cream junkie, so I always come around when it’s, with a sale on the ice cream, whatever they have. I think today it’s Friendly’s. Next week it’ll be probably, you know, something else, yeah, right, whatever.”
He pointed out a difference he sees between the Garnerville and New City stores, “I know the one in New City, I can’t speak for the one here, their fish department. If they say there’s something not there like say, I like catfish, they’ll come around the next day they’ll have a catfish for me.
Thumann’s representative Michael McClinden who has been with Thumann’s over 30 years. I started when I was 8, to be honest with you work for my father.
His longevity with the company means he knows the industry pretty well. What’s the biggest seller food has right here,
According to nim the biggest seller here is the Gourmet turkey. It used to be the ham. It used to be the hot dogs.
Now it’s the gourmet turkey.
Why does he think the switch happened?
“The big health craze now. Chicken breasts and turkey. No one’s eating pork, roast beef went down a lot. This is probably our best product. It’s very good. No salt, no MSG. No gluten. It’s really good. We actually have, another one, all-natural turkey. It’s got about 4 ingredients in it turkey, sea salt, you’ve got me on the other two, but it tastes just like this. You’d never know it. We got a couple of all-natural products, roast beef, hot dogs.
What are some products that you’ve had over the years that just bombed, haven’t really sold?
“We tried doing pre-sliced, pre-slice packaging. Just pick it up and grab it. No good. Didn’t really sell.”
This is Customer Appreciation Day, and today, Anthony from Zoey’s Gelato is doing a demo.
“Today we’re demoing pistachio, gelato, grand slam cracker, cherry vanilla, salted caramel chocolate pretzel, death by chocolate, coffee espresso, mint chocolate chip, mint sorbet mango sorbet, lemon sorbet, and raspberry sorbet.”
“We’re located in, Westfield, New Jersey.”
Being located there how’d they end up here with, Shoprite?
“Well, they tried my gelato and they liked it, and I made them a retail line of pints. Inserra stores carry all 18 flavors in their frozen aisle with 18 flavors.
It must be a lot to try to make on a daily basis.
“Yes it is but it’s going well and it’s a great premium quality gelato.
Lawrence Inserra III, one of the members of the Inserra family that owns the ShopRite Supermarkets, 23 of them, I believe, in the area.
“We have a fresh grocer in Ringwood, and then 2 Price Rights, which is a different format that we have in Garfield, New Jersey and Patterson, New Jersey. So about 28 stores, give or take, give or take. Then we have liquor stores as well, and it’s Lawrence Inserra the 3rd. My dad he’s junior, then Grandpa was senior, and then now I have a son who’s almost 5 and who’s the 4th, which is awesome.”
When he met his now wife he fell in love with her immediately. “I knew she was the one and like awkwardly on the 1st date or 2nd date we went on, I was like, listen, hypothetically speaking, if this relationship continues, do you have any problem naming our first male child, Lawrence, Rocco, Inserra the 4th? She was like, no, and I was like, we can continue. She’s amazing.”
I know those type of people like to see owners here because they feel people who own company like this one, they look at them like they are stuck up. It just shows that you’re a normal human being. You’re not snooty
“That’s because of, it’s really my grandparents, my great grandparents who I didn’t get to know, but let’s call it as it is. What created my future was I don’t want to say it inappropriately, but I hit the jackpot when it came to who I was born to. Like I literally, yeah, but you see… he agreed that there are people who get born into it and their nose is so far in the air that they can drowned in a rain storm.
“Dad made sure and my family, my mom, all these people made sure to keep our nose to the ground to look around us keep our heads at eye level. We were told about the experience that brought us here, which was to give you the backstory. Antoinette was my great grandmother.
She was born in the year 1900 in Brooklyn on Sullivan Street
in Brooklyn one of seventeen kids. She’s a champion.”
His great grandfather, he had a vision of doing pastry chef, being a pastry chef, but then the Great Depression hit.
“That was on Ridge Road in Glenhurst, New Jersey.”
How did they come up with the name?
That was more from, that was more from the actual co-op itself. So, we don’t own the name Shoprite. We own Wakefern Food Corporation and not we, forgive me, it’s my aunts, my dad, Logan my cousin, they have Wakefern. Yes, they are our distributor, but they own the Price Right Banner, Fresh grocer banner, Dearborn Markets, Shoprite, now, Morton Williams in the City, Fairway and Gourmet Garage. They have acquired those brands and now we can operate those stores or open as those stores, so that’s what gave it their start.”
“That was, it’s debated between 1954 and 1957, I believe it was 1957, and from there it’s grown to a point where Grandpa lived, so I told you Lyndhurst, Rutherford, and then moved to North Jersey. Then another owner who had these stores up in your state. I think it was Singer, but he ended up acquiring a lot of these stores, that was our introduction to Rockland County, because this, the first full size store was Ramsey, then Hasbrouck Heights.
Spring Valley was one of the old stores, Tallman, Airmont. That introduced us to Rockland, and we fell in love with it. We live right here. We’re in Mahwah, so I have had Rockland Suffern is right around the corner from us, and I, what we love about Rockland County is it’s a challenge because it’s shifting internally.” He explained.
They ended up, subleasing our Tallman store which was devastating to him because he loves it there, but they were having difficulty with finding the right blend when they saw that there was a big push of Orthodox Jewish families that moved into the area they wanted to do right by them.
“We did great numbers in floral there. We had Grandpa had the rabbi come in and bless the appetizing department, do all that stuff, but then the old school locals were like, What are you doing? This is like we don’t need whatever.”
So, we tried to find that balance, and that’s what Rockland County deserves. It’s an ever evolving, ever changing state, and somewhere in between the mixes of different people here we love it, the melting pot that is, we’re all the way up in Stony Point is our furthest north store, and then we come to Garnerville, but we go Stony Point, Garnerville, New City and then we have West, West Nyack, which is a great store. That bridge always has construction on it, but we love that location.
He pointed out that there is a bald eagle sanctuary too, just fun fact in the back of there. He’s seen it’s pretty cool. He’s also seen some of them flying around, so cool. Then the women (female eagles) hunt and they are camouflaged so they blend into the tree line and then hunt for food for the families. It’s pretty cool to witness it, but yeah, that was the story. He knows that story because that’s what was driven into their heads.
The Inserra’s really care about the people who work for them and want to make the customers as comfortable as possible and for them to have the ability to find what ever they want.
The Customer Appreciation ended at 6:00 pm and the people who shopped there that day were very happy with the event.