The Market Report

America's Food Basket Opened: 2013 Owner:  Edwin Polanco Previous Tenants:  Supreme Markets (1950s-early 1970s) > IGA Foodliner (1970s) > Farmers Warehouse Market (1970s-2013) Cooperative:  America's Food Basket Location:  926 Cummins Hwy, Mattapan, MA Photographed:  June 15, 2019 Welcome to Mattapan, home to a 20,000 square foot America's Food Basket supermarket and a much smaller, recently-closed nonprofit grocer called Daily Table. That's our other tour today, which you can see here ! Impressive mural aside, when we look at this America's Food Basket, we can tell the building is very old. As a matter of fact, it goes back to the 1950s when it was a location of the local chain Supreme Markets. In the early 1970s, it became an IGA Foodliner , then the Farmers Warehouse Market, which occupied the space until 2013 . The building is also a very unusual shape, since it's essentially a rectangle but the front wall is diagonal to accommodate the diagonal path ...

Daily Table Grocery Open:  2023-2025 Owner:  nonprofit Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  none Location:  474 River St, Mattapan, MA Photographed:  July 6, 2024 There have been a few efforts around the country to start nonprofit grocery stores. There a few models that have worked , but it's still a relatively new, somewhat unproven approach. In 2015, former Trader Joe's president Doug Rauch started a nonprofit grocer in Boston's Dorchester neighborhood ( paywall ), and Daily Table has since opened locations in Roxbury and here in Mattapan , along with locations outside of Boston in Cambridge and Salem. While the other stores made it longer, closing just last month , the Mattapan store pulled the plug sooner and closed just two years after opening. Daily Table said the 3,000 square foot store was receiving as little as 70% less traffic than other locations. I did get the chance to visit, though, in the summer of 2024. The Daily Table stores were an unusu...

Star Market Opened: 2014 Owner:  Albertsons Companies Previous Tenants:  Shaw's (2003-2014) Cooperative:  none Location:  4 River St, Mattapan, MA Photographed:  June 15, 2019 Welcome to Boston, everybody! This is where we'll be spending the next several months, touring the city from south to north. Feel free to refer to the map in the graphic above to get a sense of where we are in each post, but at the end of each neighborhood (or group of neighborhoods, as is the case here), I'll post a map showing each store so you can get an idea of where they are in relation to each other. It's fitting that our first stop in Boston is a Star Market, given that it's the biggest player here in town. Star Market and sister chain Shaw's have a combined 10 stores in Boston, while their main rival Stop & Shop has nine. Whole Foods has six, America's Food Basket has five, Trader Joe's has four, and the rest of what we'll see here in Boston is assorted other groce...