It's been fun, Boston! Over the last five months, we've seen every supermarket in Boston (except for one) and there's just an immense variety across the city. There's a lot to enjoy here, so if you haven't seen all the stores, make sure you see them all on this map and with the guide below. On the map, the markers in red are tours, yellow are look inside, and blue are snapshots.
Your Guide to Boston Supermarkets
America's Food Basket
Bazaar Supermarkets
A local chain of Eastern European grocers, Bazaar Supermarkets owns only one store in Boston -- the Bazaar on Cambridge. It's a small store stocking items from across Eastern Europe, along with produce, prepared foods, and a European-style deli and bakery.
Bell's Market
This longtime Southie independent grocer is gone -- for now. The building it's in was recently demolished, with plans for the supermarket to return once the new building is complete. Famous for gray corned beef, the butcher is the centerpiece of Bell's.
bfresh
Stop & Shop -- which originated in the Boston suburbs and today is based in Quincy -- introduced the bfresh brand for smaller-format, urban stores about 10 years ago. At around 10,000 square feet, the bfresh stores were a fraction of the size of the Stop & Shop stores, which are typically 50,000 square feet or larger. The concept was introduced in various locations, including in Brighton and Allston, but all locations were closed by 2023.
Brother's Supermarket
Not to be confused with the upscale Brothers Marketplace chain owned by Roche Brothers, Brother's Supermarket is a chain of small-format, urban supermarkets in the southern part of Boston. The stores focus on Latin American foods.
C-Mart Supermarket
With locations in Quincy and Boston, C-Mart has sold Chinese foods in Boston's Chinatown since 2004. Although they've recently closed one of their Chinatown locations, the other one remains in business.
Daily Table Grocery
A nonprofit grocer founded by the former president of Trader Joe's, Daily Table stores popped up in a few of the neighborhoods of Boston and its neighboring cities before closing last spring. Focused on low prices and a limited assortment, Daily Table received donations and bought low-cost items from local producers and distributors. They also made prepared foods in their in-store kitchen.
Dorchester Food Co-Op
Boston's only cooperatively owned grocery store is in Dorchester, and it's attracted some high-profile members -- including the mayor of Boston. The small-format, newly-built store is somewhere between a mainstream supermarket, a natural food store, and a neighborhood grocer, and has a cafe.
Foodie's Urban Market
With two locations, gourmet grocer Foodie's Urban Market focuses on prepared foods, produce, and meat, along with specialty and everyday grocery items. There's a location each in the South End and in South Boston.
Happy Supermarket
Dorchester and Jamaica Plain are home to Boston's two Happy Supermarkets. The neighborhood grocers are small, but both have a full grocery selection and the Jamaica Plain location has a liquor store. In Jamaica Plain, their spot has been continuously occupied by a grocery store since 1912.
Jia Ho Supermarket
Located on the ground floor of a former theater in Chinatown, Jia Ho Supermarket sits below one of Boston's most well-known dim sum restaurants. The space was previously a C-Mart Supermarket.
Lambert's Rainbow Market
This small chain of produce and specialty markets has an outpost in Dorchester's Neponset section. In season, it's also home to a sprawling garden center in its location near the waterfront.
Ming's Supermarket
Now called Go Fresh 365, Ming's Supermarket is one of the larger Chinese supermarkets in Chinatown. Its main draw is a large room with rows of produce, and meat and seafood counters lining the sides.
Phú Cường Market
Boston's newest Vietnamese grocer is also its largest. This store was constructed in 2013 on Dorchester's Savin Hill.
Price Rite Marketplace
Up until 2020, New Jersey-based Wakefern Food Corporation -- the cooperative behind ShopRite and The Fresh Grocer -- only had one store in Boston: a Price Rite discount supermarket in Hyde Park. But in 2020, the owners of a few local Save-A-Lots joined Wakefern and converted their Roslindale and Roxbury locations to Price Rite. A Dorchester location came later. The limited-assortment, low-cost supermarkets focus on the basics and have a large selection of storebrand items.
Roche Bros
Gourmet supermarket chain Roche Bros owns two stores in Boston, including one at Downtown Crossing in the landmark space once occupied by famous department store Filene's Basement. Today, the chain is owned by Connecticut-based wholesaler Bozzuto's, which supplied the stores for years when they were owned by the Roche family.
Shaw's
A native of nearby Brockton, today Shaw's has only two supermarkets in Boston, both on the outskirts of the city in East Boston and Hyde Park. When Shaw's and sister chain Star Market were both owned by British supermarket chain Sainsbury's, the majority of the Star Market locations in and around Boston were converted to Shaw's in the early 2000s. A few stores converted back to Star Market around 2010, but the rest were switched back to Star Market in 2015. Some never were -- in fact, the Hyde Park location was originally a Star Market but never returned to its original brand.
South End Food Emporium
A small gourmet market on the border of the South End and Back Bay, the South End Food Emporium has been selling specialty food since 1989. A deli and prepared foods counter is the centerpiece of the store.
Star Market
Originating in the western suburbs of Boston, Star Market today is owned by Albertsons Companies, which also owns Shaw's. In fact, many of the Star Market locations in Boston and its suburbs briefly became Shaw's stores starting when Sainsbury's owned both chains in the early 2000s, then switching back between about 2010 and 2015. There are eight Star Markets in Boston, making it the second-largest chain in the city by store count. But Shaw's and Star Market combined have 11 stores in Boston, one more than Stop & Shop does.
Stop & Shop
Stop & Shop is Boston's hometown supermarket chain. Although it originated in Somerville to the north and is now based in Quincy to the south, it's the grocer most associated with the city of Boston. With 10 stores in the city, it's Boston's market leader and the second-highest in the greater Boston area by sales (behind Market Basket). Their stores can be found in nearly every neighborhood of Boston, with a combination of new-build locations, acquisitions from other chains, and renovated and expanded older locations. Stop & Shop owns the largest supermarket in Boston, in the South Bay mall.
Allston | Grove Hall | Hyde Park | Jamaica Plain | Mission Hill | Neponset | Roslindale | South Bay | South Boston
Super 88 Market
One a larger chain of Asian markets, today Super 88 Market has only two locations, in Allston and Malden, a northern suburb of Boston. The Allston location is known for its food court, and it's the largest Asian supermarket in the city.
Trader Joe's
The large and growing Hawaiian-themed supermarket, which recently signed on to open in a closed Walgreens in West Roxbury, has four other locations in the city. The Smallest Trader Joe's in the Known Universe, as the welcome sign proclaims, is in a Back Bay basement of just 5000 square feet -- the average Trader Joe's is about three times that size -- and they're also the only supermarket in Boston Harbor's Seaport District.
Tropical Foods El Platanero
Boston's largest and highest-profile Caribbean supermarket is Roxbury's Tropical Foods, also referred to as El Platanero ("the plantain vendor," roughly). Today's Tropical Foods was constructed in 2015 replacing an older and smaller store on a neighboring property.
Truong Thinh Supermarket
This longtime Vietnamese supermarket is located between Savin Hill and Fields Corner in Dorchester. It's one of several Vietnamese markets in that neighborhood, reflecting its southeastern Asian population.
Village Market
Village Market's only Boston outpost is in Roslindale Village, which is a logical location -- their other locations are in small towns in eastern Massachusetts, and Roslindale has more in common with some of those coastal towns than much of Boston. Although this is a new-build store, having been constructed in the late 1990s, a Finast and Stop & Shop were previously on this property.
Whole Foods Market
Whole Foods, America's self-proclaimed "healthiest grocery store," entered the Boston market by acquiring a local chain of natural food stores called Bread & Circus in the 1990s. They kept the Bread & Circus branding until 2003. They've also taken over a handful of other chain stores and independents across the city, including Johnnie's Foodmaster, a local chain.
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