Foodie's Urban Market - Boston, MA (South End)

Foodie's Urban Market
Opened: 1998

Owner: Vic Leon

Previous Tenants: First National Stores (ca. 1950-late 1970s)

Cooperative: none

Location: 1421 Washington St, Boston, MA

Photographed: July 27, 2019

Welcome to the South End, and to our second Foodie's location! The other one is about a mile east in South Boston. They're right around the same size, both around 8000 square feet, and both look very similar.

First National Stores (later Finast) built this store around 1950, staying put until the late 1970s. I'm not sure whether there was another supermarket here between Finast's closure and when Foodie's Markets opened in 1998.

Produce is in the front-left corner, with meats and service butcher in the first aisle. Deli and prepared foods are in the back-left corner of the store, with dairy on the back wall and frozen in the last aisle on the right side of the store.

The overall look of the store is similar to the Southie location, but you can tell certain older characteristics of the building have been preserved (or replicated) here. The flooring appears to be real wood, and while I doubt it's actually the original flooring of the space, it's possible. The ceiling similarly seems to be either the original ceiling or a reproduction. As you can see, it's not the ceiling tiles you typically see in stores.

Like the Southie location, the look of the store is very upscale inside, and the selection is angled the same way. Still, since there aren't that many grocery shopping options in the South End, there's a little bit of regular grocery selection too.

I particularly like the chalkboard aisle markers here, and I think it fits with the character and general appearance of the store well.

Older cases with doors added for dairy in the back.

But the frozen foods cases look rather new. What doesn't look new? The soffit or air duct visible to the left up by the ceiling. That's a common characteristic of these old store spaces. Notice similar ducts and vents here.

A look across the front-end back towards produce.

The old-school character of the building and store is also repeated in the customer service counter and office, which isn't quite a separate room but is separated from the sales floor by a partial wall. I love the little window between customer service and the office, and the old pictures. One of them actually appears to be of this building...

...showing a First National Stores in what appears to be this location. I don't know the date of the photo, and I didn't even realize it was this store (or even a supermarket!) until I was just writing this post, six years after I took the picture. So I would've attempted to get a better closeup of that particular image, but here's my best attempt at pulling it from the above picture. Yes, it's terrible, but you can definitely see the First National name and enough similarities that it's pretty clear it's this building.

Zooming out a bit from my exterior picture, you can see the distinctive stripes and three squares on the left side of the building today on Google Maps. Cool! It's wonderful that they have this picture on display in the store. Tomorrow, we're headed to the western side of the South End, about half a mile west, for a small grocery store there!