Ramen Spot is a new Ramen restaurant coming to Deptford NJ on Hurffville Road.
The location is within the small shopping center where Wendy’s is located, across from Forman Mills.
In the same immediate area across the street, JOANN Fabric and Crafts has started the remodeling of the long closed Babies R Us property, targeting an opening ahead of the Holiday shopping season. We had broke this story back in December.
I didn’t have enough to write about each store on their own, so given they are so close to each other I decided to combine the two! Keep scrolling for commentary and photos on each of these businesses.
Ramen Spot Deptford
As mentioned, Ramen Spot is moving into the “Wendy’s” shopping center on Route 41.
Their location is directly next to the recently opened Mr Wish Asian tea and smoothie shop which recently opened. They should make for an awesome combination! Pinto Thong Thai is also in the same shopping center.
Previously the Ramen Spot location was home to Boiling House Express which was a seafood boil ‘n fry restaurant. We reported on them back in November 2020, and they have since closed.
We believe the new Ramen Spot restaurant will be under different ownership, after a quick text chat with the location’s previous tenant.
So at this point we don’t have a lot to go on for the new Ramen Spot eatery. We do have contact information for the new owners but we haven’t been able to connect just yet.
But by now I think we all know what ramen is… 42Freeway has reported on a few that opened in the area, such as Glassboro’s Oishi Ramen and Rayaki.
From that prior post we described ramen as:
Ramen is a large bowl soup with noodles made from wheat flour (pho is rice flour).
Ramen is served in a meat, vegetable or occasionally a fish based broth, and like other soups… added to the noodles are a variety of ingredients from sliced pork, vegetables, eggs and more.
Once they are close to opening, we’ll probably report back!
Joann Fabric and Craft – New Larger Deptford Location
Back in December 2021, 42Freeway was the first to report on the new location for Deptford’s JOANN Fabric and Craft store, who will be taking over the long closed Babies R Us store which sits prominently on Clements Bridge Road.
Joann currently has a store in Deptford’s Deptford Crossing shopping center where Marshall’s and TJ Maxx are located. Specifically the current JOANN is next to Ollie’s.
I explained some of this in the original post of why they would choose to relocate, but I’ve had some recent comments along the lines of “Why are they moving?”. So I thought I’d run down the key points as I see them.
Superstore
Over the years JOANN has been moving key locations into a larger “Superstore” size format. Both Cherry Hill and Mt Laurel have these larger stores.
JOANN has positioned themselves as not just a fabric store, more like a full craft store like Hobby Lobby.
So the original Deptford JOANN Store is about 10,000 square feet. The building they are moving into is FOUR times the size, at 40,000 square feet!
Now I haven’t seen the site plans so maybe this 40,000 sq ft space will be split? We don’t think so. We think this will be a 40,000 sq ft store.
The main evidence of that is the leasing company’s marketing flyer indicates the entire space is being utilized by JOANN.
The Cherry Hill location is 25,000 square feet, and I couldn’t track down the Mt Laurel size, but I believe it is even bigger.
Location
The new location in the former Babies R Us is definitely a better location.
It sits on two high traffic roads, Clements Bridge and Hurffville/41, and being the first store in the center at Clements Bridge Road…. the visibility for the store is huge!
The store itself is a massive billboard advertisement for the 10s of thousands who drive by it every day. This can not be overstated enough.
Drivers will regularly be reminded “oh yeah, I have to pick up some things for the spring. I’ll pull into JOANN.
Which is a related aspect of the new location… not that it is difficult to get to the current location by no means, but this will be so much easier. And no one is seeing the current JOANN store unless they drive directly up to it!
Plus there are several quick food options in the new location; McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Boston Market. “Let’s just go to JOANNs for the craft paint we need, and then we can hit Boston Market”
It wasn’t too long ago that AC Moore was in the same shopping center. It will be neat to have a craft store back in that center!
Lastly… a commenter politely asked “Why would they go there when Babies R Us failed?”
Well, for all the reasons above.
But also, there are many reasons a store can close and in the case of Babies R Us, it had nothing to do with the location in Deptford. Babies R Us was part of the Toys R Us family which honestly imploded at a Corporate level.
Links and Location
Ramen Spot – Coming Soon
1135 Hurffville Road (Route 41)
Deptford New Jersey
Joann Fabrics New Location Coming Early Fall
Website Link to current Deptford store