Roche Bros
Open: late 1990s - 2022
Up on a hill above Quincy's port and south of downtown, this mall was constructed in the late 1990s, home to a Walmart on one side and a Roche Brothers on the other. The supermarket -- on the larger side for Roche Brothers, at around 65,000 square feet (including a separately-owned liquor store) -- closed in 2022, but I visited in 2019 before it closed. Shortly after this Roche Brothers closed, the supermarket reopened as an H Mart, which you can tour here.
When I visited, the store didn't feel like its closure was impending. From all indications, it was extremely well-maintained right up to the end. Quincy has a large and growing Asian American community, so my best guess is that there simply wasn't enough demand for a large, mainstream supermarket here. Quincy does have several other large conventional supermarkets, which we'll be taking a look at as we travel through the city.
We entered to the grand aisle on the right side of the store. A coffee shop was in the front right corner, with prepared foods, deli, and seafood lining the right-side wall. Bakery was at the back of the grand aisle along with a cheese island. Dairy lined the back wall with the meat department in the back-left corner and frozen foods in the front-left corner.
The store was very attractive, if quite a bit whiter than some other Roche Brothers we've seen. (Stores built with this decor package tended to have more beige and yellow.) I don't know what decor package this store would've had originally, but I assume this was a renovation at some point around 2005-2010.
Oddly, when H Mart moved in, they didn't renovate the space at all. I don't know if they have plans to make bigger cosmetic changes, as typically they extensively renovate acquired stores.
The store did feel a little uncomfortably large, though. My impression is that Roche Brothers is more comfortable in slightly smaller stores. The Westborough one I linked above is 45,000 square feet.
Still, this was a very nice store and it's good to see it's continuing on as a supermarket, just a different kind of supermarket.
In the front-left corner, there was a liquor store and the bread department, which feels like it may have previously been a different department. (Did this store ever have a pharmacy or a bank branch inside?)
The second-to-last aisle had frozen foods on one side, with more in the front part of the last aisle.
It's a slightly unusual setup to have meats all the way over here, but it flows well enough. Still, it's unusual to have the meat and seafood departments so far from each other.
There was a service butcher window at the back of the last aisle, which you can see straight ahead above.
And a look across the front-end...
Open: late 1990s - 2022
Owner: Rick & Ed Roche
Previous Tenants: none
Later Tenants: H Mart
Cooperative: none
Location: 101 Falls Blvd, Quincy, MA
Photographed: August 4, 2019
Make sure to tour the new H Mart here, and on Monday, we're headed just around the corner to tour another Asian supermarket!
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