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Showing posts from November, 2024

Special Report: Stop & Shop (future) - Acton, MA

Stop & Shop Opening: December 13, 2024 Owner:  Ahold Delhaize Previous Tenants:  Kmart Cooperative:  none Location:  252 Main St, Acton, MA Photographed:  November 26 & 27, 2024 Contributor:  Andrew K. In addition to a look at SuperFresh and Food World stores in Brooklyn, we're getting a special look at the new Stop & Shop coming soon to Acton, MA today! A roughly 70,000 square foot former Kmart is being transformed into the newest Stop & Shop, whose footprint will be slightly smaller than the Kmart at around 64,000 square feet. Two other small storefronts are also being constructed. The facade is new, as the Kmart's was a much older, shingled awning design . Our contributor Andrew brings us a look inside the soon-to-open store. The store has Stop & Shop's newest decor package, which we saw in the Allston Yards location most recently. This location's decor is a bit simpler and older-feeling -- notice the white vinyl flooring and the white drop ce

Special Report: Food World Supermarket (future) - East Flatbush, Brooklyn, NY

Food World Supermarket Opening: TBA Owner:  Hi Jong (Howard) Lee Previous Tenants:  Key Food > Pioneer Supermarkets > CTown Supermarkets Cooperative:  Key Food Stores Location:  4209 Ave D, East Flatbush, Brooklyn, NY Photographed:  November 20, 2024 Today we're checking out two Key Food stores in progress in Flatbush! A mile west, a Food Universe has been doubled in size and switched to SuperFresh . And here in a quiet residential neighborhood along Avenue D, the area's only supermarket is about to be reopened after being closed for several years. The space on the right here has been a supermarket for a long time. It's 9500 square feet, and in 1999, opened as a Key Food (not sure what was there before Key Food). The store closed in 2015 and reopened as a Pioneer the same year, then closed in early 2017. Later in 2017, it actually reopened, again under the Pioneer banner, only to switch to CTown in early 2019. CTown closed in late 2022. In May 2023, Hi Jong Lee -- w

Special Report: SuperFresh - Flatbush, Brooklyn, NY

SuperFresh Opened: fall 2024 Owner:  Shee Chun Lee Previous Tenants:  Royal Farms > ? > CTown Supermarkets (closed 2018) > Food Universe Marketplace (2018-2024) Cooperative:  Key Food Stores Location:  1188 Flatbush Ave, Flatbush, Brooklyn, NY Photographed:  November 20, 2024 Key Food's momentum has been very steady and very hard to ignore. The cooperative, based in central Jersey, had around 100 stores ten years ago and in that time has nearly quadrupled their store count. They've established significant presences in New Jersey and Florida -- about 50 stores in each state -- and expanded into Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. But they originated in Brooklyn in 1937, and even close to home they've been hard at work. Here in Flatbush, one of their stores has roughly doubled in size with a major renovation. We previously saw this store under its previous brand, Food Universe (also affiliated with Key Food), in 2020. The supermark

700 Main St, Boylston, MA

Original Grocery Tenant: Boylston Center Store Address: 700 Main St, Boylston, MA Opened:  ca. early 1960s Closed:  ca. 1990s Later Tenants:  Boylston Deli Photographed:  May 11, 2023 Welcome to Boylston! There aren't a lot of businesses in Boylston nor is there exactly a downtown, but there is a town green. On the town green is this small store, a longtime grocer that dates back to at least the 1960s but around the 90s became the Boylston Deli, a small restaurant. Incidentally, why do so many of these small New England towns have town commons (or greens)? Well, originally they were intended as shared space to graze livestock for townspeople who didn't have their own pastures but kept an animal or two. Today, the spaces are mostly cosmetic and serve as gathering places (and Boylston's is beautiful ). Boylston is on the eastern side of the Wachusett Reservoir, and on Monday we're headed up about five miles north to Clinton, the town at the northern point of the reservoi

101 W Boylston St, West Boylston, MA

Original Grocery Tenant: Iandoli Super Markets Address: 101 West Boylston St, West Boylston, MA Opened:  ca. 1980 Closed:  by 1987 Later Tenants:  subdivided Photographed:  November 8, 2020 West Boylston once had an IGA , a Big D (later Price Chopper) , and an Iandoli supermarket, although their tenures didn't all align. The IGA was open roughly from the early 60s to the early 90s, the Big D/Price Chopper was open roughly from the late 80s to the mid 00s, and this store was open only within the 80s (possibly the late 70s too). It's about 26,000 square feet, and for whatever reason doesn't seem to have been acquired by Shaw's when the rest of the Iandoli chain was. The space was subdivided, and half became a movie theater. Part or all of the space was also once a JC Penney, as we'll see. Also here in the Scarlet Brook Marketplace is a relatively small Walmart, of under 100,000 square feet. These entrance and exit doors are likely original to the supermarket, as is