America's Food Basket - Dorchester, MA (Codman Square)

America's Food Basket

Opened: 2011

Owner: Edwin Polanco

Previous Tenants: Finast (1930s-1980s) > People's Tropical Food Supermarket (closed 2011)

Cooperative: America's Food Basket

Location: 576 Washington St, Dorchester, MA

Photographed: June 15, 2019

The main intersection of Washington Street and Talbot Avenue forms the center of Codman Square, one of the sub-neighborhoods of Dorchester roughly in Dorchester Center. The main supermarket in this area is today an America's Food Basket, but goes back as far as the 1930s when First National Stores -- later Finast -- first opened shop at 576 Washington. The 8400 square foot store stayed a Finast all the way through the 1980s, and at some point after that the People's Tropical Food Supermarket opened. People's occupied the spot until 2011, when America's Food Basket moved in. Between 2013 and 2015, AFB overhauled the whole store, expanding into a neighboring storefront and redoing both the inside and the outside.

The produce department, on the left side of the store, is located in the expansion, along with the meat department. The meat department continues on the back wall of the store, with frozen and dairy in the last aisle on the right side. There's a tiny deli and bakery in the front-right corner of the store, occupying what I assume was originally the customer service counter.

The store is small but mighty and is absolutely packed with merchandise. It's the only supermarket immediately around here, so it's very mainstream and has all the basics along with a smaller selection of Latin and Caribbean foods.

Nice produce! This store made me feel at home because there are so many stores in and around New York City that look and feel just like this one.

It looks like many if not all of the fixtures were replaced in AFB's renovation. The flooring and grocery shelving were certainly new.

You don't have to look farther than aisle 5 to see just how packed the store is. I believe there are six or seven aisles in total. Aisle 5 is all nonfoods and HABA, with an awfully extensive aisle marker.

But did you catch the real reason I took a picture of this aisle marker? No, it's not that they're apparently selling entire dishwashers in aisle 5, but that they actually got the name of the store wrong. At no point was the store's name American Food Basket, but the chain was previously Americas' Food Basket (i.e., the food basket of both North and South America, a nod to the Latin lean of the chain) and became America's Food Basket (i.e., the food basket of America, presumably just the United States) around 2014.

And here's the aforementioned very packed aisle. Zoom in and you'll see just how much is on display here in this very small supermarket. Dairy and frozen are in the last aisle...

You can see some Essential Everyday products on the shelves; AFB uses that and Wild Harvest items from UNFI, formerly Supervalu.

The very small deli and bakery department is in the front-right corner of the store.

And here's a look at the front-end, with four registers. You can see why it would be logical that the deli's spot under the manager's office was previously the customer service counter, if perhaps People's Tropical didn't have a deli.

And that wraps up Dorchester Center! Now we're going to head all the way out to the eastern edge of Dorchester, to the coastal neighborhood of Neponset. Have a great weekend, and on Monday, we'll tour a supermarket out by the shore!