Growing discount chain opens first Mercer County, NJ location

When is a Walmart not a Walmart? When it closed down some time ago and the space reopened as a growing, quirky retail chain, that’s when.

The first ever Ocean State Job Lot (some customers just call it simply Job Lot, but that’s its full name) has opened in Mercer County, New Jersey. It sits at the space formerly occupied by Walmart at 101 Nassau Park Boulevard in the Nassau Park Pavilion, Princeton.

It is the seventh in the state but the first for Mercer County. The others are located in Deptford, Franklin Park, Clinton, Sparta, South Plainfield, and Freehold.

It’s somewhat of a quirky store. The chain opened in 1977 in Rhode Island (nicknamed the Ocean State, thus the full name) and they sell everything from housewares to hardware, flooring to food, clothing to toys, pet supplies, automotive, etc. The quirky part is they sell at deeply discounted prices by mostly buying items in bulk that didn’t sell or were part of excess merchandise from other big retailers. Think of them as the retail turkey vultures that swoop down and then pass the savings to you.

And they’re growing. 145 locations at last count.

They have stores throughout New England as well as New York, Pennsylvania, and here in New Jersey. They’ve been expanding their footprint by scooping up shuttered Toys ‘R’ Us buildings and other locations, like that former Princeton Walmart where they opened on August 26.

If you’re looking for deals, you may not need look further.

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Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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