Market Basket
Opened: 2009
I mentioned yesterday that it's somewhat unsual to see a 75,000 square foot, suburban supermarket downtown in a small New England city. Well, how about a massive, 135,000 square foot suburban supermarket right outside Chelsea's downtown?
Chelsea is a city of about 40,000 to the north of Boston. In fact, here we're just across the harbor from Charlestown and East Boston. A couple blocks northwest of the main downtown area, the former Mystic Mall was demolished and replaced by this massive Market Basket in 2009. The mall dated back to the 1970s, and had an older and much smaller Market Basket in it.
Inside, you'd hardly know the Market Basket was double the size of many of their locations because, well, it's basically identical. There's just more of it. But the basic setup, layout, decor, and offerings are all exactly the same as a smaller store.
This time, just for fun, we're going to tour it backwards starting with the perishables departments on the right side. Market's Cafe and the seating area are in the front-right corner, with Market's Kitchen and the bakery on the front wall to the right of that. Produce is on the right side of the store with floral, which is technically the last aisle. Frozen foods are also on the right side of the store, in the last few aisles. Meat is on the back wall, with service seafood and deli in the back-left corner. And dairy is on the left side in the first aisle.
As we can see, aside from the fact that this store is absolutely enormous, it's indistinguishable from the other Market Baskets around. Still, you don't shop at Market Basket because it's exciting -- you shop there because of the prices.
Here's an example of how this store can be so large and still identical: there's a wall of nothing but potatoes.
Placer.ai estimates that this store gets nearly 300,000 visits a month. Friday's Stop & Shop in Malden -- a busy store -- gets a little more than half that traffic. The sprawling Wegmans in Medford, MA (where I have not been) gets about 190,000 visits a month. Yes, this store is high-volume.
And you can tell that in pictures like the one below! Note that these pictures were taken on a Monday around 7 pm. Now picture what this store must be like on the weekends.
A look across the back wall from the produce/bakery side towards the deli/dairy side.
You can see that the ceiling and lighting are different around the perimeter, which is an interesting choice.
If you told me the picture above came from a store built in the 50s, I'd believe it. Market Basket's design, though, comes off more timeless than dated -- if only because of the local love for the chain that people have.
You can see, though, that cosmetic choices aside, these stores are absolutely spotless. Imagine how much work it must take to keep this store as clean and well-stocked as it is with what averages out to be nearly 10,000 people passing through a day.
Service seafood and deli are in the back-left corner of the store.
As you can see, there aren't any added features here but each counter or department is larger with more space.
The store doesn't feel all that large inside, which is actually pleasant. It feels smaller and more manageable than its huge size.
And dairy is in the first aisle on the left side of the store.
Customer service and the offices are in the front-left corner of the store.
You can tell the store's size, though, by the registers on the front-end -- over 30, with no self-checkouts and only a few express registers! It seems like they're all needed, though.
This is not the only supermarket in Chelsea, but there are actually only two in town. (Although the city has 40,000 people, they're packed into only two and a half square miles.)
Opened: 2009
Owner: DeMoulas family
Previous Tenants: none
Cooperative: none
Location: 170 Everett Ave, Chelsea, MA
Photographed: July 22, 2019
The other supermarket is right downtown, and we'll be touring it on Monday!
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