Stop & Shop - Brookline, MA

Stop & Shop
Opened: ca. mid-1970s

Owner: Ahold Delhaize

Previous Tenants: assorted non-grocery tenants

Cooperative: none

Location: 155 Harvard St, Brookline, MA

Photographed: June 16, 2019 and March 8, 2020

Contributor: Jacob V.

Welcome to the largest supermarket in Brookline! This 31,000 square foot Stop & Shop is certainly unusual, and you can tell that immediately from the outside look of the building. The building existed long before the supermarket -- it was built in the 1930s or earlier -- while Stop & Shop appears to have opened around the mid-1970s (it was open by 1977). I don't know all of the tenants in the unusual building prior to Stop & Shop, but by 1949, Fred Miller Chevrolet occupied the space. By 1970, it had become a furniture factory run by H. Sacks & Sons. In 1971, it was a Ryder car and truck rental facility.

The two above photos come from our contributor Jacob V., showing the new logo on the outside in March 2020. The rest of the photos here are my own from the summer of 2019. Although the signage was switched outside, the interior hasn't been redone.

The highly unusual building appears to have been reduced in size slightly when Stop & Shop moved in. They seem to have done this to expand the parking lot, which now in part runs under what I assume was originally part of the building. The store has a footprint of around 32,000 square feet today, though there may be a basement (it looks like there may also be a parking garage under the building, but I'm not certain of that).

Inside, the distinctive beams continue, a great feature of the store's current interior. Although it dates to the 1970s -- and appears to originally have had a pharmacy, which was apparently later removed -- it was most recently renovated in 2007-2008. That means it was one of the last stores to receive this "Taste & Time" decor package, one of the last few stores before the fruit-slice yellow and purple interior.

The grand aisle is on the right side, with natural foods and floral in the front-right corner. Prepared foods, deli, and seafood are opposite the produce department in the front half of the first aisle. Meat lines the rest of the first aisle, with dairy on the back wall and frozen on the left side. Bakery is in the front-left corner.

Although the store is aging, and looks dated now, it's still in pretty good shape. I do like this decor package, and although I think it works best in larger stores, it still looks pretty good (if a little bland) here.

As you can see in that more recent picture I linked above, the store hasn't really gotten any major work done to the inside, but it's still in good shape if dated. I don't know how much traffic this store gets, as it's the largest supermarket in Brookline but a bit separated from the main business district. The Trader Joe's nearby very clearly does high volume, and there's a Star Market on the other end of Brookline that seems to do a solid business too. Using foot traffic data from Placer.ai at the time of writing, it looks like the store gets a little more foot traffic than the Star Market but it's about twice the size of the Brookline Star Market. It's about the same size as the Longwood Star Market, which gets about 1.5x the foot traffic this store does, but it's also in a more urban area. So those numbers are hard to do much with. My assumption is that the store does just fine because, quite simply, it's still in business.

The seafood department is gone here, but it would've been about halfway back on the right-side wall of the store. Because of the store's shape, it's deep and narrow, so in an unusual layout the meat department lines the rest of the first aisle extending beyond the grand aisle.

Cold cuts are opposite.

Dairy lines the rest of the back wall...

...and in line with the large Jewish community here in Brookline, the second aisle (also behind the grand aisle) is all kosher. Brookline also is home to the Boston area's only all-kosher supermarket.

The rest of the grocery aisles are pretty standard, but they're looking pretty good. You can see the columns in the aisles continue.

A look at the aisle markers and the interesting beams. It's nice that they preserved them, although I have to assume they're structurally essential so they'd be impossible or extremely difficult to remove.

It's a nice coincidence that the aisle markers have a similar slanted bottom, matching the beams. There were a couple variations on these aisle markers.

Frozen foods are in the last aisle.

And bakery is up next, in the front-right corner. There is an in-store bakery here, even though the store is on the smaller side.

And a look at the front-end, with customer service beyond the registers.

This is a pleasant and generally well-maintained supermarket, but it's starting to look dated. We'll have to wait and see if it gets a renovation soon, as Stop & Shop renovates more and more of their stores. Tomorrow, we're off to a small grocer to the west of Coolidge Corner!