The Market Report

  Continuing the celebration of The Market Report's 10th year! Each month of 2026, I'll be posting a different special feature to celebrate my 10th year of writing this blog. There's a lot to see already, so here's a summary of what we've done so far: January: Remembering A&P February: Best of 2016-2020 March: Back in Time ( Day 1 , Day 2 , Day 3 ) April: Recommended Reading May: Behind the Scenes June: Best of 2021-2025 July:  Shop the City Following up on April's Recommended Reading post, here's some more recommendations. Now, I love supermarkets, but in my real life outside of this blog, I read (and write) about all kinds of food stuff, so let's step away from the world of supermarkets for a day. Here's the best of what you need to be reading food-wise outside supermarkets, plus a handful of supermarket-specific recommendations at the end. Food Journalism Okay, fair warning here: there's much more outstanding food journalism than I c...

  Continuing the celebration of The Market Report's 10th year! Each month of 2026, I'll be posting a different special feature to celebrate my 10th year of writing this blog. There's a lot to see already, so here's a summary of what we've done so far: January:  Remembering A&P February:  Best of 2016-2020 March:  Back in Time ( Day 1 ,  Day 2 ,  Day 3 ) April:  Recommended Reading May: Behind the Scenes June:  Best of 2021-2025 This is one of the most exciting special features I'm doing this year and the culmination of years' worth of work -- Shop the City is now live! This is the definitive guide to food stores in New York City. Every single supermarket (more than 1000) in all five boroughs, plus a selection of smaller grocers and history. Search by the neighborhood, the store name, the owner, the supplier, and lots more! Browse the website here... Click here to visit SHOP THE CITY! Technically, this is July's special feature, so we're goin...

Patel Brothers Opened: 2021 Owner: Swetal & Rakesh Patel Previous Tenants:  non-grocery tenants Cooperative: none Location: 292 Daniel Webster Hwy, Nashua, NH Photographed: July 2, 2026 When you think of grocers of New Hampshire, you're probably not thinking of an Indian supermarket. And it's true that most of New Hampshire's grocery stores are pretty straightforward. But Nashua and its surroundings have a significant Indian American community, and so businesses catering to that community have popped up too. Patel Brothers is one of the latest additions, opening their first and only New Hampshire location here in 2021. This former JC Penney Home Store is around 25,000 square feet, and the produce department takes up a large part of the store at the front. It's oriented with the first aisle here running along the front wall of the store and the registers along the left-side wall. Patel's Fresh Kitchen and a bakery is in the front-right corner, with dairy lin...

Whole Foods Market Opened:  December 2024 Owner: Amazon Previous Tenants:  Toys R Us > Amazon Fresh (planned, never opened) Cooperative: none Location: 272 Daniel Webster Hwy, Nashua, NH Photographed:  July 2, 2026 Recognize the outside of this store? This has the classic facade installed in all Amazon Fresh stores , and that's because this former Toys R Us was slated to be the only Amazon Fresh in New Hampshire. The store measures around 44,000 square feet, so while it's smaller than a lot of supermarkets, it's actually about 1.5 times the size of the other Whole Foods here in Nashua. While this store is laid out exactly like an Amazon Fresh (and that means likely that the Amazon Fresh was fully built out but simply never opened, like so many locations), the decor is drastically different from Amazon Fresh's appearance. Frankly, it's quite beautiful in person. With the classic Fresh layout, you enter to produce in the front-right corner. Meat and seafood are...

Trader Joe's Opened: 2012 Owner: Aldi Nord Previous Tenants: assorted non-grocery tenants Cooperative: none Location: 262 Daniel Webster Hwy, Nashua, NH Photographed: July 2, 2026 Nashua isn't the largest city in New Hampshire, but its location -- right on the Massachusetts border and just 35 miles from Boston -- means it's often the place where new brands enter the state. That was true when Trader Joe's opened its first New Hampshire location here in 2012 (actually moving across the border from Tyngsborough, MA), it was true again two years later when the first Whole Foods in the state opened on the north end of town (stay tuned), it was true when Patel Brothers opened its first and only NH location next door to this in 2021, and Amazon Fresh was supposed to open its first and only NH location in this same strip mall. That never happened , of course, and now the space is a second Whole Foods. Patel Brothers and Whole Foods will be posted in the next two days! ...

SuperFresh Opened: October 2023 Owner: Howard Lee Previous Tenants:  ShopRite (1968-1984) > Pathmark (1984-2015) > Price Saver Fresh Marketplace (April 2019-September 2019) Cooperative: Key Food Stores Location: 242 Lincoln Blvd, Middlesex, NJ Photographed: August 5, 2026 Welcome back to the Middlesex SuperFresh! This store opened in the fall of 2023 , and around three years after its original grand opening, it's getting some work done as the store is cut back. It seems like this store never quite got to the volume it needed, though it was decent enough to keep the lights on and the doors open apparently, but it's being cut back from its original size of around 56,000 square feet to around 40,000 square feet -- still a large supermarket, but smaller than originally intended. The owners of the supermarket will open a laundromat in the remaining space along with shifting their UPS store into that area, similar to the change at the Linden SuperFresh (though that seems ...