C-Mart Supermarket - Boston, MA (Herald St)

C-Mart Supermarket
Opened: 2009

Owner: Quxiang Lin

Previous Tenants: Super 88 (1993-2009)

Cooperative: none

Location: 50 Herald St, Boston, MA

Photographed: July 27, 2019

The second store right on the border between Chinatown and the South End -- the first was yesterday's Whole Foods -- is a 17,000 square foot C-Mart. This isn't the first C-Mart I've posted, we actually saw one back in Quincy, but it appears this was their second or third location. The first (or first two) was just north, and we'll be seeing that soon.

The store is oriented to face the parking lot (south side), with Washington Street running along its right (east) side. Incidentally, this store's address is actually on Herald Street, which runs along the back (north side) of the building.

Refrigerated and frozen items line the outside walls of the store, with service meat and seafood counters in the front-left corner.

C-Mart opened here in 2009, replacing a closed Super 88 Market. We've seen closed Super 88 locations previously, but I've yet to actually post an operating one. There are two still in business, one in Brighton and one in Malden to the north of Boston.

Super 88 opened in 1993, but the building was built in about the 1960s. I have no idea whether there were grocery stores here prior to Super 88.

This store seems generally well-maintained, but it was definitely showing its age when I visited. A plan is in motion to replace the supermarket with a multi-story affordable housing complex, possibly including a new C-Mart on the ground floor, so I assume the supermarket doesn't want to spend too much time and money fixing up the store when it's possible it's soon to close anyway.

Packaged and frozen meat and seafood in the last aisle, all the way on the left side of the store.

The service butcher and seafood counters are in the front-left corner of the store. It's a very similar layout to the (larger and newer) Quincy store, and actually a lot of Chinese markets use approximately the same layout.

Looking up towards the front of the seafood counter...

I kind of like the setup with produce between the registers and the aisles. It makes for a large produce department with a good sightline across the floor. That setup is most common in Chinese supermarkets, but you'll occasionally find it in other stores -- such as the SuperFresh in Roselle, where the layout is somewhat forced by the store's unusual building.

The register lane markers seem newer than the rest of the store on the front-end.

Before we move into the main part of Chinatown, we're going to head about three blocks west for a former supermarket!