A bright, sunny Monday morning in the Wawarsing court room saw a number of people dressed to impress, but for different reasons than usual. Tops Friendly Supermarkets was interviewing potential employees for the store they will open come June.

Tops will be taking the place of Ellenville ShopRite, which closed its doors on August 31 of last year, leaving the village without a large grocery store and leaving other tenants in the supermarket complex with a big, empty building next to them.

Job fair day was just getting started when the Shawangunk Journal stopped by to take some photos. Store Manager Ezra Culver was on hand along with a team from corporate HR who were monitoring the interviews going on across the room.

Culver said that the work at the store will really get going the first week of May. Tops will retain some of the equipment they inherited from ShopRite, but they will also bring in new stuff. He also said that the store layout won’t change much – there will still be fruit and vegetables at the entrance, meats at the back, and beer is most likely going to be in the same space it was. The biggest change is that the former ShopRite Boulevard will become Tops Boulevard.

Terry Houck, Supervisor of the Town of Wawarsing, came upstairs to check things out and meet Mr. Culver.

Tops began as a neighborhood grocery store in Niagara Falls, started up by Italian immigrants Armand Castellani and Thomas Busscaglia. Castellani, who came to New York in 1920 from Rome, founded the chain. In the 1950s he entered an agreement with Busscaglia who owned a grocery equipment business. The pair went on to open their first modern supermarket in 1962, a 25,000 square foot store in Niagara Falls.

It is a subsidiary of Northeast Grocery, which also owns the Price Chopper and Market 32 brand of supermarkets based in Schenectady. They have around 148 stores and 59 convenience stores.

A franchisee named Alfonse DiMino suggested the name “Tops,” which was meant to suggest quality and the best shopping experience available.

Parking behind the court was packed all day as people came in droves to apply for the jobs, the majority of which pay hourly, ranging – according to the company website – from $15.75 as a floral lead to $24.00 as a produce manager.