TOUR: C-Mart Supermarket - Quincy, MA

C-Mart Supermarket

Opened: ca. 2018

Owner: Quxiang Lin

Previous Tenants: non-grocery tenants

Cooperative: none

Location: 28 Hayward St, Quincy, MA

Photographed: August 4, 2019

Just next door to the 99 Ranch Market we saw last week, we've arrived at the C-Mart in Quincy. Although C-Mart reportedly had been attempting to open in Quincy since 2008, their store opened about 10 years later, around 2018 when this 35,000 square foot former light industrial building opened to the public as a C-Mart supermarket. This store joined two locations in Boston's Chinatown, one of which has since closed. It seems that C-Mart has also previously had other locations in Boston, as well as other locations in other states, but as far as I can tell they're down to just this location and one in Boston. (In 2021, the Massachusetts attorney general cited the chain for failing to keep time records for employees and for failing to pay overtime.)

This Quincy store is really nice, and was very busy when I visited back in 2019. I didn't go back in 2023, so I don't know how 99 Ranch has affected this store. The properties are immediately next door to each other.

Service seafood and meat departments line the left side of the store, with produce in the middle. The grocery aisles are behind the produce department, with refrigerated and frozen foods around the back and right side of the store.

This is a very different shopping experience from 99 Ranch, and it feels much less like a traditional American supermarket. Of course, some of that has to do with the fact that 99 Ranch converted, well, a traditional American supermarket.

As is often the case in Asian supermarkets, meat, seafood, and produce take up most of the sales floor and seem to be the biggest sellers.

Notice that this store is very deep but not that wide, so there's enough space for the grocery aisles to go entirely behind the produce department rather than next to it like 99 Ranch (and most stores in the US).

Packaged meat and dairy at the back of the first aisle.

I like the flooring in the back part of the store. The produce, meat, and seafood areas have polished concrete flooring.

The store's kitchenwares department is also extraordinarily well-appointed and well-stocked. Check this out!

As we can see, when C-Mart opened here, all the fixtures were new.

Frozen foods on the right side of the store. In the below picture, I'm standing at the back of the store looking up towards the front.

And one more look across the produce department as we circle up towards the front-end...

This is a very nice store and it seems very busy, but I don't know how it's holding up now that 99 Ranch is so close by. This store and 99 Ranch are close, but there's actually another supermarket just behind this one. But it's across the train tracks, so you'd have to travel another couple blocks to actually get there. That's where we'll head for tomorrow's post!