Tiller & Rye Opened: 2015 Owner: Sarah Morneault and Lindsey Levesque Previous Tenants: Rite Aid > Brewer Discount Furniture Cooperative: none Location: 20 S Main St, Brewer, ME Photographed: June 13, 2022 I'll stop beating a dead horse someday soon, but there are so many supermarkets that have opened up in former Rite Aids and other drugstores in the last five years or so. Here's one from a bit before the current trend. This former Rite Aid in downtown Brewer briefly became a furniture store after closing, but since 2015 has been Tiller & Rye, a roughly 10,000 square foot specialty market. The exterior doesn't have a particularly distinct Rite Aid look, but my best guess is that the drugstore designed this facade to match the somewhat small-town setting. Neither the furniture store nor Tiller & Rye redid the outside extensively, but the inside has been remodeled. And as you can already tell from the outside, this is no typical supermarket...
Hannaford Opened: early 00s Owner: Ahold Delhaize Previous Tenants: A&P > A-Mart Discount Foods (1970s) > Shop 'n Save (open by 1991) Cooperative: none Location: 383 Wilson St, Brewer, ME Photographed: June 13, 2022 Brewer is a town right outside Bangor, which is the bigger city in the area (and the county seat of Penobscot County). Brewer is to the east, across the Penobscot River from Bangor to the west. We're going to take a look at some grocery stores here in Brewer before crossing into Bangor. This Hannaford, although it's been extensively renovated, actually is hiding a centennial A&P deep under that facade. The supermarket today has been expanded to around 52,000 square feet, but prior to Hannaford was also an A&P-owned A-Mart Discount Foods, and later Shop 'n Save. Hannaford is the primary big-chain supermarket in town, but tomorrow we're going to see a much more specialty grocery store in Brewer's small downtown! PLUS, big news! ...