Market 32 - Marlborough, MA

Market 32
Opened: 2021

Owner: Northeast Grocery

Previous Tenants: Price Chopper (late 1990s-2021)

Cooperative: none

Location: 240 E Main St, Marlborough, MA

Photographed: March 26, 2025

It's time for a look at a Market 32! It's been a while since we've seen a store owned by Northeast Grocery, which runs Price Chopper, Market 32, Market Bistro, and Tops stores. This one was built in the 1990s as a Price Chopper, converting to Market 32 in 2021 after some renovation. It's a nice store, but definitely a far cry from the deluxe Market 32 stores.

A programming note: this store is actually back in Middlesex County, about eight miles northwest of Framingham (where today's other post is). But I inconveniently visited this store less than a week after I finished posting the Framingham-area stores. We also recently saw the Hannaford here in Marlborough, the only other supermarket in town, which is slated to become a Shaw's and closed in September. So now we're headed back just for today!

The layout is standard for Price Choppers of this era, with the Market 32 touches. Cafe and prepared foods are in the front-left corner, with deli and bakery on the left-side wall. Produce is in the rest of the grand aisle with meat and seafood on the back wall. Frozen and dairy are on the right side, with floral in the front-right corner. Beer and wine are in the first aisle. No pharmacy, and it doesn't look like it ever had one. The store was previously 24 hours under Price Chopper, but is now open 6-12. That may also be a coronavirus holdover.

The bones are for sure left over from Price Chopper, but the decor looks good here. Flooring, lighting, and most fixtures were replaced in the remodel.

Deli and bakery service counters are in the back-left corner.

As we can see, this store basically looks like a much nicer, updated Price Chopper. It doesn't feel nearly as premium as some of the earlier Market 32 conversions and builds, and lacks some of the prepared foods selections and specialty selections. There's no cheese counter here, for instance.

Still, it looks nice inside.

You can also see that it lacks the more varied decor touches of earlier stores, such as the wood paneling, large flavor text, bright green walls, and some of the promotional signage. See here, an example in Sutton.

Once we get out of the grand aisle, this store feels distinctly like a Price Chopper. The walls are painted and some of the fixtures are new (mostly just repainted), but you can see how the basics are left over from this era.

Beer and wine in the first aisle. Early conversions had dark gray or black ceilings, but this one didn't get a new coat of paint on the ceiling when it was converted.

Still, you can see a couple of the specialty merchandising features that the earlier conversions had more of.

The displays are definitely a step up from Price Chopper in this store.

But the aisles are essentially the same as a Price Chopper. It seems that Market 32 has been angled less upscale, possibly because of what shoppers are looking for, and also possibly because those conversions are extremely expensive.

The frozen foods aisles are divided in half. It's possible that, like the Webster Square location I linked above, this frozen foods department originally had coffin cases in the middle.

Dairy lines the outside of the last aisle. As you can see, the decor is very minimal in this part of the store.

Floral in the front-right corner.

The front-end, too, feels much like a nicely updated Price Chopper rather than a completely different experience like some of those earlier Market 32s.

Still a nice store, even if it's not quite as deluxe as some of the other locations. And that wraps up our look at the northwestern suburbs of Boston! Tomorrow we're headed to a few more locations I didn't get to post the first time we passed through the Worcester County area. Stay tuned!