Whole Foods Market - Somerville, MA (Inman Square)

Whole Foods Market
Opened: 2013

Owner: Amazon

Previous Tenants: Stop & Shop (1950s) > Johnnie's Foodmaster (open by 1962, closed 2012)

Cooperative: none

Location: 45 Beacon St, Cambridge, MA

Photographed: February 22, 2020

One look at this Whole Foods near Inman Square can tell you it's been a supermarket for a long time. A bit of research can confirm that: it was built in the 1950s as a Stop & Shop, becoming a Johnnie's Foodmaster no later than 1962. Johnnie's closed in 2012, and several of their stores were acquired by Whole Foods. At around 15,000 square feet, this store is small for Whole Foods, but not nearly as small as that Brookline location.

Yelp has a few pictures of this store as Johnnie's, including the carpeted flooring that Massachusetts supermarkets seemed to love. Like Brookline, this store got a bright-red floor when Whole Foods opened up and renovated the space.

Produce is in the first aisle on the right side, with dairy at the back of that aisle and continuing onto the back wall along with meat. Frozen is in the second-to-last aisle, with the deli, bakery, and seafood departments in the last aisle. The store is very narrow and deep.

Okay. I'm gonna say it. I hate the red floor. It barely even matches the decor. Why red?

It looks like Whole Foods essentially gutted and rebuilt the whole store when they took over from Johnnie's. I don't really know what Johnnie's layout was, though.

Here's seafood in the back-left corner...

...and deli/bakery on the rest of the left-side wall.

It's always impressive to me how much Whole Foods is willing to squeeze into their smaller stores. We've seen several similar stores in the Boston area that have very complete selections.

I don't know that there's an in-store bakery (maybe in the basement?) but there's no service bakery counter.

And even a tiny cafe beyond the registers on the front wall...

And that's all for this Whole Foods! I'm always glad to see these old supermarket buildings staying on as supermarkets.

Enjoy the weekend, and on Monday we'll head just north to Somerville to check out another old-school store!