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. Last month, we took a look at my  favorite posts of 2016-2020 , and in January, we investigated the  history of A&P and its other brands . This month, let's spend some more time on the past with a look at some memorabilia today along with  this week's historical photos  and first memorabilia post . Today, in our final memorabilia post, we'll be looking at matchbooks ( which we've seen before ). These were all purchased at an antique store in downtown Gloucester, MA. The apostrophe has since been dropped from Gristedes. Elm Farm has an extensive ad for Bonded Meats inside this matchbook. Given that the antique store was in Gloucester, I wouldn't be surprised if these came from right in town. The Shaw's in Gloucester was previously a Star Market... ...and I don't know if ...

Original Grocery Tenant:  Elm Farm Food Stores Address: 426 Essex St, Salem, MA Opened:  by 1965 Closed:  by 1970 Later Tenants:  Giant Value Discount Foods (open by 1970, closed 1988 or 1989) > Crosby's Marketplace (open by 1989, closed 2000 or 2001) > CVS (2002- ) Photographed:  May 20, 2025 Just west of downtown Salem, Elm Farm Food Stores opened this 15,000 square foot supermarket in the early 1960s, no later than 1965. By 1970, it had become a Giant Value Discount Foods, which then became a Crosby's Marketplace in 1988 or 1989. Crosby's stuck around here until late 2000 or 2001, and a new CVS opened up in the space in 2002. Now, a couple interesting things here. First off, the Elm Farm to Giant Value progression is actually a familiar one: a supermarket in Boston's Mission Hill was originally an Elm Farms, later a Giant Value. It looks like both of those might have been cooperatives or franchises, so it's possible ownership didn't change during tha...

Original Grocery Tenant: Elm Farm Food Stores Address: 978 Boylston St, Newton, MA Opened:  between 1957 and 1963 Closed:  by 1968 Later Tenants:  Purity Supreme (open by 1968, closed 1997) Photographed:  July 8, 2026 A glance at this 18,000 square foot building pretty quickly tells me that CVS didn't build it. At least, I'm not aware of too many other new-build CVS stores with a curved, concave facade like this one has. Here's a look at the building in daylight. In fact, this store was constructed between 1957 and 1963 as an Elm Farm Food Store, a chain I most recently discussed at the Mission Hill Stop & Shop . By 1968, though, it had become a Purity Supreme, which remained in business until 1997. Stop & Shop had acquired Purity Supreme in 1995 but continued to use the name until they converted all but three of the remaining Purity Supreme stores to Stop & Shop in 1997. This wasn't one of those three stores, but I can't tell for sure whether Stop ...

Stop & Shop Opened: 2003 Owner:  Ahold Delhaize Previous Tenants:  none; other stores previously on property Cooperative:  none Location:  1620 Tremont St, Boston, MA Photographed:  June 2, 2019 and July 19, 2019 Welcome to Mission Hill! This store is right on the border of Longwood and Mission Hill, which is south of the Back Bay / Fenway area. This suburban area is between Longwood, the suburb of Brookline to the west, Roxbury to the east, and Jamaica Plain to the south.  This complex was a ground-up build in 2003, but it replaced an older store on the property. It wasn't a Stop & Shop, though. Instead, some searching on Newspapers.com revealed that it opened as an Elm Farms Food Store in April 1955. It looks like it may have been co-branded Elm Farms and Calumet Supermarket -- it appears that Elm Farms may have been a cooperative? -- and by 1978, it seems to have been co-branded Giant Value and Calumet. Calumet was in business until at least...

Stop & Shop Opened:  1996 Owner:  Ahold Delhaize Previous Tenants:  Elm Farm Food Co. (late 1950s-late 1960s) > Finast (late 1960s-1996) Cooperative:  none Location:  545 Freeport St, Dorchester, MA Photographed:  July 27, 2019 We continue our streak of smaller-than-average and nicer-than-average Stop & Shops in the southern part of Boston, much like the stores we've already seen in Hyde Park and Roslindale . This Stop & Shop -- which is just a quarter mile from the water (although, to be fair, it's the Neponset River, which is separated from the Massachusetts Bay by a peninsula) -- is only 45,000 square feet. It was built in the 1950s, originally an Elm Farms Food, later becoming a Finast by the late 60s and then a Stop & Shop in 1996 when Ahold acquired the chain. Around 2005, the store got a major renovation and expansion to its present size and layout, but it doesn't look like the building was actually demolished and replaced. It was...