French & Brawn Marketplace
Opened: 1868
Welcome to quaint downtown Camden! This small waterfront city has a Hannaford just outside of town, but right in town is the French & Brawn Marketplace. This grocer actually dates all the way back to 1868, and the store is only about 2500 square feet at the main intersection of the town.
You can tell from the wonderful exterior that this store has been here for many decades! Actually, more than a century.
The store faces Elm Street, the main street in town, with a side entrance in the back to the deli and butcher area.
Heading in, we can tell the store is very old-school but wonderfully preserved and a really nice, small town supermarket.
Produce is in the front-right corner, with frozen foods in the rest of the first aisle. Deli and butcher are in the back corner, with wine and dairy at the back of the store. A few grocery aisles are in the middle.
This store is a member of Associated Grocers of New England, and sells Food Club brand products.
Looking back up towards the front of the store...
This is a small, but very complete, grocery store. Camden actually has another small independent supermarket a bit outside of town that we'll be seeing tomorrow.
Deli and butcher in what appears to be an expansion in the back. Love the ceiling in this section!
There's also an in-store bakery, although there's no service bakery counter. And now back into the main supermarket...
A very old-school touch rounds out our look at this store -- the register counter at the front, set up more like a general store than a supermarket.
And even as we exit, there's another decades-old but nicely-preserved reminder of the background here...
Owner: Todd Anderson
Previous Tenants: none
Cooperative: Associated Grocers of New England
Location: 1 Elm St, Camden, ME
Photographed: August 11, 2019
French & Brawn has long been one of my favorite independent New England grocers, but another great one is right here in town. We'll be seeing that tomorrow!
Comments
Post a Comment