bfresh
Open: 2015-2019
Welcome to bfresh! Yes, the chain called itself that (not Bfresh, or bFresh, or B-Fresh, or...) and the brand was introduced right here in Allston in 2015. It was a specialty, small-format fresh supermarket run by Stop & Shop in a division called Fresh Formats, which also briefly ran Everything Fresh in Philadelphia. This roughly 13,000 square foot former Staples was given an extensive renovation to open as a fresh-focused supermarket, and Stop & Shop clearly thought the bfresh format had promise. Unfortunately, customers didn't exactly feel the same way. A much smaller, 8600 square foot store opened in Fairfield, CT in November 2015, closing just months later in April 2016. August 2016 brought a location to Brighton at 470 Washington Street, which closed in late 2017 along with the Everything Fresh location. Meanwhile, February 2017 brought a location to Somerville, which we'll see shortly, and that one actually stayed open until late 2023. In a total branding mess, Stop & Shop first planned a bfresh location for Newton, which they decided would instead open as a traditional Stop & Shop. In late 2019 or early 2020, they switched the branding to bfresh, then closing it in the summer of 2024. Read all about that location here and here. And in December 2019, Stop & Shop also closed this Allston location.
Stop & Shop's format is generally pretty rigid -- although they have some smaller-format stores and some nontraditional locations. So bfresh was their attempt to get into smaller, upscale, and urban locations. (That Jersey City store I linked above might be smaller and urban, but absolutely nothing about it could be called upscale.)
And to me, Stop & Shop absolutely nailed the aesthetic of the store here. This store design has more in common with the cooler, urban stores -- even some of the nicer and newer Whole Foods in New York City, for instance -- than it does with a regular Stop & Shop. In fact, if it weren't for the Stop & Shop price signs and branded products here, you wouldn't have known it was affiliated with Stop & Shop.
The store is oriented with the grand aisle against Harvard Street, on the right side of the store, with produce opposite the deli and prepared foods counters lining the outside wall. Bakery is up at the front. Meat/seafood are on the back wall, with dairy/frozen on the left side of the store.
Despite issues with the center store, the perimeter was pretty fantastic. The decor is fun and appealing, the offerings were quite a bit better than the average Stop & Shop, and the store overall was pleasant.
You can see there's a clear attempt to make the store more specialty-feeling than a regular supermarket. The Allston Stop & Shop is just under a mile northwest of here, and it definitely seems like they've taken certain elements of this store that worked and combined them with traditional Stop & Shop elements for that location.
Unfortunately, my stone-age iPhone couldn't quite handle the LED neon-style department signs in this store, so they come out looking a little blown-out. But the effect was very cool in person. I would link other online photos showing the signage, but it seems like other cameras had similar problems.
No service meat or seafood here, but the selections were in packages in these refrigerators on the back wall.
bfresh clearly started with all-new fixtures here, and again the appearance of the store certainly wasn't the problem. You can see it looks great.
I think it goes to show that, just as operators most comfortable with small-format stores sometimes have trouble with larger-format ones, the reverse is true. It's easy to assume that it's easier to scale down than scale up -- because you don't have to work as hard to fill a larger space -- but curating a store's selection down into a smaller, leaner format is a skill in and of itself.
Notice the aisle markers here. One thing I really appreciate is that they were clearly willing to do things differently -- in both appearance and offerings. But it also feels like there were enough stores opened and closed that the format could've been refined a bit more rather than simply trying it in different places.
A look at the fruit-slice-branded storebrand products here. The white background products were the older design, and the ones with the fruit-slice in a circle are the newer design.
And a note on pricing. Obviously, I don't have a full price comparison for this store, but I can tell you that this mustard is currently going for $1.69 at the Allston Stop & Shop (at least, at the time of writing). So consider that it was 40 cents more expensive here six years ago. That goes to show you just how different the pricing was, and that's probably a big part of why customers didn't respond well to this format.
Dairy and frozen were in the back-left corner.
And a look at the front-end, which as you can see had a bit of an unusual register setup, clearly designed for smaller orders.
Owner: Ahold Delhaize
Previous Tenants: Staples (closed 2015)
Later Tenants: CVS (2020- )
Cooperative: none
Location: 214 Harvard Ave, Allston, MA
Photographed: June 21, 2019
I must say, I'm a bit surprised this store didn't make it. (After its 2019 closure, it became a CVS.) I only visited a few times in the summer of 2019, but it seemed busy each time. I think Stop & Shop's biggest issue here was product mix and pricing. I believe it was priced higher than a standard Stop & Shop without a significantly higher-end offering in the center-store, with an oddly abbreviated product mix. I know someone who had family nearby and said there would be enormous selections of certain products and then almost nothing to choose from in other categories. The competition here is significant: we're about 2/3 of a mile from Coolidge Corner in Brookline, which has any number of stores, but we're also just a third of a mile south of a very large Star Market. That's where my friend always went.
Obviously, pricing was just one factor in this store's failure -- it's clearly not the only factor, as Star Market nearby is currently selling an equivalent honey mustard for $2.49 -- but if the perception was that the store had an odd selection of Stop & Shop items priced higher than Stop & Shop, it probably wasn't an appealing proposition.
And that's all for bfresh! We'll take a look at the Somerville location once we get up to that area, but tomorrow we're going to end the week with a bang. Tomorrow is a look at the Star Market nearby along with the Asian supermarket right down the block from it!
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