Sudbury Farms
Opened: unknown
The Market Report arrives in Needham! I haven't spent a lot of time in Needham -- very little, in fact, and I've only been to this one store while passing through for another reason. Needham also has a Trader Joe's, but two of the three supermarkets in town are owned by local chain Roche Brothers. One is a very old-school Roche Brothers that recently got a major renovation, and the other is a Sudbury Farms that Roche Bros also owns. I'm not particularly clear on this store's history, but the building has been here since around 1960.
Sudbury Farms started in Sudbury and either was always a Roche Brothers-owned store or was acquired by Roche Brothers (although I'm unsure when that would've been). The chain also previously had at least one other location, in Randolph, MA near Brockton, which is now an America's Food Basket. Most recently, last fall, wholesaler Bozzuto's acquired Roche Brothers, Sudbury Farms, and Brothers Marketplace, the chain's small-format gourmet market store.
Like Roche Brothers, Sudbury Farms is positioned as an upscale general supermarket. This store is fairly small, at around 25,000 square feet, and was probably renovated most recently around 2012.
You enter to the produce department in the front-right corner of the store, with bakery in the back-right corner. There's not really a grand aisle here, but the rest of the service departments are in the last aisle -- a layout closer to Whole Foods than most supermarkets. Dairy lines the back wall and frozen is in the second-to-last aisle. Butcher is in the back-left corner along with packaged meats, and deli and prepared foods line the left side of the store. Seafood is in the front-left corner, with cheese in an island at the front of the last aisle. Definitely an unusual layout, but it works here and flows nicely.
This store is what I might call timeless: the decor doesn't feel brand-new and trendy, but it also doesn't feel old or dated. Maintenance here is also pretty spectacular, and even the older fixtures and shelving are in excellent shape.
Some of the fixtures are definitely older, but everything looks to be in good shape. It's possible that this store is due for a renovation, but since the Roche Brothers in town actually closed during the renovation, I'm sure they didn't want to be doing both at once.
I love the circular ceiling element here!
The only unfortunate design choice is this tiling in the freezer aisle, which is obviously just patching an area where the flooring had to be repaired, but is completely random and doesn't match the rest of the tile around it. It seems like such a bumbling mistake for an otherwise meticulously maintained store.
A large, clearly high-end butcher counter is in the back-left corner of the store, with the rest of the meat department in that corner. There are multiple prepared foods bars between the butcher and deli, and this store doesn't really seem to have reduced much since the coronavirus. Note that, unlike many of my Boston-area stores, I only photographed this one months ago -- not six years ago!
A large hot food bar and prepared food counter is up next on the outside wall of the store here in the last aisle.
Looking towards the back with meat and packaged prepared foods...
Deli and the large cheese island are towards the front of the last aisle, and you can see the seafood department on the front wall. It's definitely an unusual place to put a seafood department, but it's likely the only place in the store it could fit. Still, Sudbury Farms makes excellent use of this space given that it's really quite small.
This look at the cheese island also gives us a chance to check out these awesome cylindrical aisle markers. You don't see design choices like that every day!
Floral is also in an island in the grocery aisles, facing the front-end.
And a look at the front-end.
Owner: Michael Bozzuto
Previous Tenants: unknown
Cooperative: none
Location: 1177 Highland Ave, Needham, MA
Photographed: January 12, 2025
This looked like a great little store, and it seems like Bozzuto's is running the Roche Brothers and related stores basically the same as they were under the previous ownership. Generally, that's a good thing, since they were mostly well-run stores. We'll see if any other changes come long-term, though. Tomorrow we're headed just north into Newton, where we'll spend about a week and a half!
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