Truong Thinh Supermarket - Dorchester, MA

Trường Thinh Supermarket

Opened: 1999

Owner: Joseph Pham

Previous Tenants: unknown

Cooperative: none

Location: 1305 Dorchester Ave, Dorchester, MA

Photographed: July 27, 2019

Dorchester's Savin Hill neighborhood has the area's largest Vietnamese population (there are also Vietnamese communities in Springfield and Worcester's Main South neighborhood, along with a few other towns in Massachusetts). And there are two substantial Vietnamese supermarkets on Savin Hill -- Phu Cuong Market, which we toured on Friday, and Trường Thinh. This is the slightly smaller of the two, at 13,000 square feet, and the older as it's been in business since 1999, but it's still a well-appointed and pleasant store.

You enter on the left side of the store to produce along with dairy and frozen foods. Seafood and meat line the back wall of the store, with grocery aisles to the right.

As you can see, this store is a bit smaller than Phu Cuong but feels much smaller, especially in the fresh departments like the seafood counter which is substantial but smaller than Phu Cuong's.

Coffin freezer cases are worked into the grocery aisles in an arrangement I don't see often.

There's a selection of nonfoods and home goods on the right side of the store, too.

I don't recognize these aisle markers, and I don't know if they were new for this store or secondhand from somewhere else. I also don't know if this space was a supermarket prior to Truong Thinh's opening.

A look across the front-end...

For our next stop, we'll be going about half a mile down Dorchester Avenue to Fields Corner, where we'll see a before-and-after of a supermarket tomorrow!