Our Story
QualitaMart opened on Springdale Road in 2019 — one family, one shop, and a fairly narrow idea of who it was for. Seven years later it is a farm market that serves half of South Jersey, and almost everything interesting about it came from paying attention to who actually walked in.
How it started
We began as a Turkish and halal grocery, for the households who could not find sucuk, proper tahini or a decent tin of olives anywhere between here and Philadelphia. That is still the base of the shop and it always will be.
What we did not expect was everybody else. The neighbour who came in for the bread and stayed for the olives. The family who had never cooked with pomegranate molasses and wanted to be told how. So we widened, deliberately. Today the shelves run Turkish, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, European and American, and the shop is a farm market rather than a specialty store — a change we chose rather than one that happened to us.
Who we are here for
The household from home. Turkish, Balkan, Middle Eastern and Mediterranean families who want the brand they grew up with, not the nearest approximation of it.
The halal shopper. Halal beef, chicken, lamb and goat, and the plain answer about pork on every deli item — which is the question that actually decides the purchase.
The Amish-fresh regular. The people who know what Friday morning means here, and who have opinions about which farm's butter is better.
The curious neighbour. Anyone meeting any of it for the first time. Ask us what a thing is and how it is eaten — that question is the reason half of this shop exists.
The Thursday drive
Every Thursday we drive two hours to Lancaster County and Berks County in Pennsylvania and come back with the week's dairy. It is on the shelf Friday morning, and when it is gone it is gone until the following Friday.
We buy from five farms and we know all five families by name: Lapp Valley Farm in New Holland, for whole milk and ice cream from their own Jersey herd; Lapp's Specialty Eggs, for pasture raised, organic brown, heirloom, duck and quail; Meadow View Jersey, for A2A2 kefir, whole milk yogurt and farm eggs; Minerva Dairy, for small-batch churned Amish roll butter; and Welsh Mountain Apiaries, for raw unfiltered honey from hives kept high in the Welsh Mountains.
From late May to November we also bring back produce grown for us under a direct land-lease agreement — picked the same day it travels.
What we are building next
A halal butcher counter, cut to order in the shop. It is coming; when it opens you will hear about it here first.
More under our own name. Seven Years Harvest already covers nuts, dried fruit, tahini, honey and grains. Nut and hazelnut spreads and our own chocolate are being worked on.
Fresh Meadow Farms, our own dairy and egg brand, starting with farm eggs. Dairy labelling has its own rules and we are working through them properly.
Fish from Türkiye, flown in weekly on Wednesdays and supplemented from US wholesale. One of the things nobody expects to find in Cherry Hill.
QualitaMart is family owned and operated, at 2060 Springdale Road, Unit 500, Cherry Hill, NJ. Open every day, 9am to 9pm.