The Market Report

Pratt's Store Opened: 1969 Owner: Darwin Pratt Previous Tenants: unknown Cooperative:  unknown Location: 2504 VT-22A, Bridport, VT Photographed: August 9, 2025 Our first store is the only grocer here in Bridport, Vermont -- a town of just about 1200 -- and it's Pratt's Store, a general store/small supermarket of around 4,000 square feet. It's been Pratt's since 1969, but it was likely another grocery store prior to that. It also has a gas station out front, as many of these small-town stores are really the one-stop shop. Now, my pictures are only from a drive-by in the summer of 2025, but thanks to these images posted by Adirondack Drone to Google Maps, we can actually see a full store tour thanks to this interactive set of views. I've included a few key ones below, but definitely click and drag to tour the store in 3-D! So it looks like grab and go prepared foods, frozen, and nonfoods are here in the first aisle on the left side. Deli and butcher are at ...

A lot of my Vermont store visits are up here in the northern half of the state, mostly from St. Albans to Montpelier and everything in between. There's a large variety of supermarkets up in this area, which is so far north that St. Albans is under 15 miles from the Canada border. We're going to begin in Bridport and Addison, kind of in the northern end of the central part of the state near the New York border, and then moving north via Barre and Montpelier, and then we head west through Waterbury, Stowe, and a number of the smaller towns in that area. We'll turn north to the Enosburg and St. Albans areas, then back down via Cambridge and environs before ending in the Burlington area. This will all take us several weeks, so sit back, relax, and enjoy this road trip through a stunningly beautiful area of New England!

Continuing the celebration of The Market Report's 10th year! Each month of 2026, I'll be posting a different special feature to celebrate my 10th year of writing this blog. There's a lot to see, so here's a summary of what we've done so far: January: Remembering A&P February: Best of 2016-2020 March: Back in Time ( Day 1 , Day 2 , Day 3 ) April: Recommended Reading May: Behind the Scenes June: Best of 2021-2025 July: Shop the City August:  Recommended Reading 2 Now onto September! I've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes, updating old posts with new pictures and new information. This is a process I started a while ago, and it's fairly labor-intensive so I've slowly been moving through some of the early blog posts. In some cases, I've significantly expanded the posts (maybe I only had a picture of the outside previously, and now it's a full tour), while in others, I've simply replaced old blurry pictures with new, better ones...

Price Chopper Opened: unknown Owner: Northeast Grocery Previous Tenants: unknown Cooperative: none Location: 263 Depot St, Manchester, VT Photographed: August 12, 2021 Just between the former Grand Union and current Shaw's in Manchester Center is this Price Chopper, and yes, this is a terrible photo and I'm aware of that. Here's what the exterior actually looks like, and this store does appear to truly have a pitched roof. It's a very small Price Chopper, possibly in the 20,000 square foot range, and looks fine if a little dated inside . I wasn't able to find out much on the history of this location, but I did find a news article from 2001 saying that Price Chopper was buying Manchester's Grand Union and moving their existing store into that location. The article didn't provide any addresses, so it sounds like this store attempted to move into what's now the Shaw's but didn't. It's also possible that this  was also a Grand Union, and ...

Shaw's Opened: 2001 Owner: Albertsons Companies Previous Tenants: Grand Union (ca. 1980s-2001) Cooperative: none Location: 64 Equinox Terr, Manchester, VT Photographed: August 12, 2021 Okay, we've already toured one Grand Union-turned-Shaw's in Wilmington , now let's check out another! Grand Union built this store in the 1980s or so, replacing an older location in town (more on that soon). It measures around 42,000 square feet, making it significantly larger than Wilmington. I visited this store in the summer of 2021, and since then, it's gotten some minor renovations and held a grand reopening. One much-needed change was redoing the signage outside to drop this small and off-center logo. The outside also got a full fresh coat of paint, and that's good because this rather rundown exterior belies the very nice interior. But before we head inside, check out these posters near the entrance still advertising Wild Harvest and Essential Everyday items, roughly ...

Similar to the posts I did in Worcester , let's take a look at the various corner grocers of Bennington! Since these are small stores and I mostly have only exterior pictures, I figured it would be best to combine them all into one post. Bennington seems to have had a rich history of corner stores, and even as grocery stores got larger and moved out to the suburban neighborhoods, these corner stores remained ( some have even expanded and are still going strong). Let's get started... Yott's Market Opened:  1984 Owner: Shefali Patel Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative: none Location: 600 Gage St, Bennington, VT Photographed: August 8, 2021 Yott's is just a couple blocks over from Henry's, but it's more of a convenience store than a substantial grocer like Henry's is. Willy's Variety Opened: 1946 Owner: Edwin Maroney Previous Tenants: A&P Cooperative: none Location: 300 Gage St, Bennington, VT Photographed: August 8, 2021 And a couple mor...