Price Rite Marketplace - Hyde Park, MA

Price Rite Marketplace
Opened: 2010

Owner: PRRC

Previous Tenants: none

Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp.

Location: 870 River St, Hyde Park, MA

Photographed: July 28, 2019

Wakefern, the cooperative behind ShopRite stores, is a powerhouse in New Jersey and the immediate surrounding area, but just a little bit beyond and their presence is very limited. Their first entry into the city of Boston proper was with this new-build, roughly 30,000 square foot Price Rite discount supermarket in 2010. It was renovated shortly before I visited in 2019, to the first generation of Price Rite Marketplace decor, then again shortly after I visited to the second generation. (I mentioned this double-renovation at one of the Worcester Price Rites, and it seems that a lot of the stores got all-new decor around 2016-17 and then again in 2018-19 or so. Consequently, what we're about to see is a bit rare, as this particular decor package didn't last much longer than a year or two in many stores.)

We enter to the produce and meat departments on the right side of the store, with dairy on the back wall and frozen on the left side of the store.

The interior is very no-nonsense and feels a bit jarring coming from the beautiful, rather high-end exterior. I do wonder if there was at some point a plan to build a different supermarket here that pulled out, leaving Price Rite to come into the space even though it wasn't originally intended for them, but I can't find evidence of that. The South Worcester Price Rite opened as a new-build store a couple years before this one did, and the exterior design is completely different. Then again, there are other reasons for exterior differences, such as the developer's preference or the character of the neighborhood. 

Here's a look at produce now (as you see, the changes are minimal).

There are now four Price Rites in Boston, with newer and smaller locations being converted Save-A-Lots in Roxbury, Roslindale, and Dorchester, which opened just after the operator left Save-A-Lot and joined Wakefern/Price Rite. We saw that owner's fourth store in Brockton. This store, along with the vast majority of the other Price Rites, is corporately owned and operated.

Price Rite is, in my opinion, becoming increasingly irrelevant in the world of discount grocers (as is Save-A-Lot). As ALDI, LIDL, and Grocery Outlet all press on with their expansion plans, Price Rite is shrinking more than growing. Plus, Price Rite is a bit more expensive than LIDL or ALDI, though the stores also tend to be larger and more complete. Still, Price Rite covers a lot of ground the others don't. Locally, there isn't an ALDI within Boston city limits, but bigger picture, Price Rite's territory in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and upstate New York is outside of the territory of both LIDL and Grocery Outlet. Price Rite competes in some locations with ALDI, LIDL, and/or Grocery Outlet in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia. But Price Rite is spread very thin, with just about 60 stores across those ten states, making me think ultimately they aren't particularly relevant at this point. (If Wakefern were willing to sell, I could see LIDL acquiring Price Rite to expand their geographic range, but there's no indication Wakefern wants to get rid of the operation.)

But it feels like Price Rite hasn't quite been able to keep up with the times in the same way that the other discounters have. The Price Rite of today is a bit nicer and cleaner than the Price Rite of 15 years ago, but substantively, the stores are not that different from how they were years ago. Still, I assume the remaining stores perform alright, because otherwise I assume they would've been closed or sold.

Certain products are under the Price Rite name, but that brand seems to be diminishing in favor of Wakefern's other generic brands, Bowl & Basket, Paperbird, and Wholesome Pantry.

As you can see, though, the stores are orderly and clean, even though they do feel like discount stores. I've certainly been in other stores (like, say, certain Target locations) that are much messier and dirtier than the Price Rite stores are.

Frozen foods line the last aisle.

Baked goods and the Sweet Spot, the small dessert case, are in the front-left corner. I believe the store's offices are behind this wall in the corner.

A look across the front-end...

Hyde Park is a very suburban, mostly residential neighborhood at the far edges of the city of Boston. So there are four large supermarkets in the neighborhood, all of different chains. Tomorrow we're headed southwest about a mile to check out the next one!