The Market Report

We are now done with South Boston and Boston Harbor! The quiet, mostly residential neighborhood is only home to a couple supermarkets, but we also saw quite a few former grocery stores and some small independent grocers . Take a look at all of them on the map below. Coming Up Next Now we're headed into the main part of the city! We're going to start in the South End -- which, as I mentioned, is different from South Boston, neither of which is actually in the southern part of Boston -- and then head north through Chinatown and into downtown Boston. The South End is a fairly affluent, mostly residential and retail/restaurant neighborhood, roughly between Roxbury and the Back Bay/Longwood area. Chinatown then spans an area around route 90, which runs underground, just south of downtown. The Boston Common is just to the northwest of Chinatown and just west of downtown. Let's begin by seeing the South End's independent supermarket on Monday!

One more day of South Boston! The neighborhood has a Foodie's Market and a Stop & Shop , along with several small grocers , but there used to be many more supermarkets in the neighborhood when supermarkets were far smaller. Thanks to Groceteria 's amazing work, I identified and photographed these assorted former chain grocers across the neighborhood. South Boston Original Grocery Tenant:  Stop & Shop Address:  325 Old Colony Ave, Boston, MA Opened:  mid-1940s Closed:  early 1960s Later Tenants:  assorted other grocers Photographed:  June 29, 2019 What was once a Stop & Shop at the far western part of Southie -- near the Dorchester/Roxbury border -- is now home to the very blue Rotary Variety. The right side of this building was the Stop & Shop, but it's possible the left side was once a store of some kind, too. Notice the rounded corner like we've seen before . The Stop & Shop building looks to be around 2000 square feet, though the bui...

Now that we've seen the supermarkets of South Boston and Boston Harbor , it's time to check out some of the smaller grocers around the neighborhoods! South Boston Llanera Market Opened:  2004 Owner:  Mary de Jesus Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative:  none Location:  260 E 8th St, Boston, MA Photographed:  June 29, 2019 Llanera Market is a small corner grocer, and it looks to be about 2000 square feet. I'm not sure what was here before it opened in 2004, but my guess is that there have probably been independent grocers here for decades. Here's a little look inside.

Foodie's Urban Market Opened: 2013 Owner:  Vic Leon Previous Tenants:  non-grocery tenants Cooperative:  none Location:  230 W Broadway, Boston, MA Photographed:  June 29, 2019 Welcome to Foodie's Urban Market! Foodie's is a two-store gourmet market chain with one location here in South Boston and the other one -- the original location -- in the South End, about a mile west. This small-format location is around 8000 square feet, and is one of two full supermarkets in Southie. The other is a larger, but still very small, Stop & Shop . You enter the store to the produce department in the front-left corner, with meat and seafood in the rest of the first aisle. Deli and bakery are in the back-left corner, with dairy on the rest of the back wall and continuing down the last aisle with frozen. It's a high-end shopping experience with a decidedly upscale product offering. The store is small but complete, and I don't recall seeing a store brand here for groceries (...

Stop & Shop Opened:  ca. late 1990s Owner:  Ahold Delhaize Previous Tenants:  First National / Finast (ca. 1950-late 1970s) > Flanagan's (late 1980s- ca. 1990s) Cooperative:  none Location:  713 E Broadway, Boston, MA Photographed:  June 29, 2019 Just across the street from yesterday's former A&P is this Stop & Shop -- one of the rather few, small-format street front stores left in the Stop & Shop fleet. (There are a handful of others, including Jersey City and Westfield , both of which were previously Mayfair Foodtowns.) This one was built around 1950 as a Finast, which closed in the late 1970s. I don't know what was here directly after Finast, but Flanagan's moved in from their location across the street by the end of the following decade. Around the 1990s, it became a Stop & Shop. The store is around 19,000 square feet. The entrance and exit are in the front-left corner, and the store is oriented to face the street with parking o...

Original Grocery Tenant:  A&P Address:  710 E Broadway, Boston, MA Opened:  late 1960s Closed:  early 1970s Later Tenants:  Flanagan's (late 1970s/early 1980s) > Brooks Pharmacy > Rite Aid > Walgreens Photographed:  June 29, 2019 This sure looks like a former supermarket! And, according to Groceteria , it is. The roughly 16,000 square foot building was constructed in the late 1960s as an A&P, which doesn't seem to have lasted long here, closing in the early 1970s. By the late 1970s, it was a location of the local chain Flanagan's , which it seems later moved across the street to what's now the Stop & Shop. We'll tour that store tomorrow. I don't know if there was any other supermarket here after Flanagan's, but it later became a Brooks Pharmacy, then a Rite Aid, and now a Walgreens. The store has a very flat pitched roof, and inside, part of the ceiling is sloped. The big circular air vents are another dead giveaway for an old store lik...

Bell's Market Open:  early 1900s-2022, new store coming soon Owner:  George Khoury Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  none Location:  246 Dorchester St, Boston, MA Photographed:  June 29, 2019 South Boston -- Southie, as it's called -- is a famously historical, small-town-feeling neighborhood. One of the enduring independent grocers in Southie was Bell's Market, a store of roughly 5000 square feet that dates back to the "early 1900s," per Caught in Southie . (Check that page out for a picture of the store in 1939!) The store, known for its butcher shop -- and its gray corned beef -- closed in 2022 to clear space for an upcoming mixed-use development that will include a brand-new Bell's Market on the ground floor. When I visited in 2019, I was amused by this sign on the front, which not only advertised a brand of milk that no longer existed, but actually, I don't think Sur-Fine ever existed. The Irish-American heritage of Southie is on proud display t...

That's all for Roxbury, and I know that was relatively brief so you're probably all caught up. But if you wanted to revisit any of this neighborhood's stores, you can browse the map here. (Don't forget, too, that I posted Tropical Foods El Platanero , which is on the northern end of Roxbury, way back in 2017!) Coming Up Next Our next stop continues east from the area we ended up in at the end of Roxbury. South Boston is an insular peninsula (come on now, that's just fun to say) at the far eastern edge of the city just southeast of downtown. And as I mentioned , most of the southern neighborhoods of Boston weren't originally part of the city, so at one time, this actually was the southern part of the city. Now, it's the roughly in the northeastern part, but it's kept its name. Note also that South Boston and Boston's South End are two very different neighborhoods, as the South End is between downtown and Roxbury. As we'll see, South Boston is a ...