Whole Foods Market
Opened: 2003
As natural food store chain Bread & Circus expanded in the 1990s in the Boston area, their main targets for store acquisition were recently-closed chain supermarkets. Several of those were former Stop & Shop locations. So far, we've seen Stop & Shop-turned-Bread & Circus locations in Back Bay and the West End, and now here's another: the Brighton Whole Foods was built in the late 1950s as a Stop & Shop, closing by the early 1990s and becoming a Bread & Circus no later than 1994. Whole Foods owned Bread & Circus from 1992 on, but kept the name until all the stores were rebranded Whole Foods in 2003.
This collection of signs made me chuckle. Parking this way, except don't enter here. (The driveway just behind the "out" sign is also an entrance, but it feels like a head-on accident waiting to happen in this one-way driveway -- which is probably why the do not enter sign is there.)
This 20,000 square foot store is one of several smaller and older Whole Foods around Boston. It's not in bad shape, but you can definitely tell the difference between a store of this age and one of this age. There's even a big difference between a store of this age and a slightly newer one. Let's head in!
We enter to produce on the right side of the store with a coffee shop next to the entrance door. Cheese and the olive bar are also on the right side, with meat and seafood lining the back wall. Frozen and dairy are in the grocery aisles, with deli/prepared foods and bakery on the left side in the last aisle.
You can see here that the decor is very significantly scaled down in a store like this, with a lower ceiling and much less wall space for signage.
This store feels a bit more logically connected than Newton Centre, into which not a lot of thought was put for cosmetic purposes.
I do like the text style here though. Service meat and seafood on the back wall.
I'm not aware of any Whole Foods in the NYC metro area (where, for any readers who might've joined us recently, I grew up and currently live) that have white vinyl tile flooring like several of these stores we've seen in the Boston area, and that's likely what's making them feel on the older side. For that matter, I can't think of any in my area that have a drop ceiling like the ones we've been seeing all do, including stores of around the same age. But my guess is that the bones of these former Bread & Circus stores date back to the Bread & Circus days, and when they switched to Whole Foods, they simply changed some decor.
Dairy here is in an aisle, rather than the more common setup with it on the back wall. My guess is there's not enough perimeter space in this store to have it on an outside wall.
Looking back over towards produce...
Prepared foods, deli, and bakery are in the last aisle.
Looking towards the back wall of the store.
In addition to this Whole Foods, we're taking a look at a small Russian grocer across the street, which you can see here.
Opened: 2003
Owner: Amazon
Previous Tenants: Stop & Shop (late 1950s-ca. early 1990s) > Bread & Circus (opened by 1994, converted to Whole Foods in 2003)
Cooperative: none
Location: 15 Washington St, Brighton, MA
Photographed: July 20, 2019
And that's all for now! Tomorrow we're headed up to Allston for a look at a recently-closed chain supermarket.
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