The Market Report

John Edward's Market Opened: 1971 Owner:  John Pouwels Previous Tenants:  First National (opened ca. 1940) Cooperative:  none Location:  158 Main St, Ellsworth, ME Photographed:  June 17, 2022 Ellsworth is the larger town in this area, roughly between the Blue Hill Peninsula and Mount Desert Island. So this town actually has three full supermarkets, and today The Market Report tours the small independent store right downtown! John Edward's Market has been here since the 70s, but one look at the exterior will tell you this building has been a store for much longer than that. In fact, First National Stores (Finast) opened up here around 1940. These days, the roughly 6,000 square foot space is a natural food and specialty store. Wine is in the front-left corner, with produce just behind that on the left side of the store. Also in the first aisle is frozen food and, in a first for me, a service counter where a clerk fills your container with bulk herbs and spices....

Stop & Compare Supermarket Opened: 1996 Owner:  Calvo and Ianotti families Previous Tenants:  First National Stores (late 1950s-1980s) > Oppedisano's Market (open by 1980s, closed by mid-1990s) Cooperative:  none Location:  170 Everett Ave, Chelsea, MA Photographed:  July 22, 2019 Truly independent supermarkets are getting harder and harder to find. It's no secret that the supermarket business is a hard one, and heck, it's rough out there for small businesses of any kind at all. But in the northeastern suburbs of Boston, a three-store, fully independent chain is not only running full steam ahead but has recently expanded. Stop & Compare Supermarket, run by members of two longtime food industry families, opened up here in downtown Chelsea back in 1996, later adding a location in Lynn in 2004 and another in 2021. Recognize the exterior of this building? If it looks familiar, it's because we've seen other stores with the same general facade design befor...

Whole Foods Market Opened: 2003 Owner:  Amazon Previous Tenants:  First National Stores (opened by early 1950s, closed 1974) > The Globe Discount Center (closed 1976) > Bread & Circus (open by 1986, converted to Whole Foods 2003) Cooperative:  none Location:  115 Prospect St, Cambridge, MA Photographed:  July 21, 2019 Welcome to the final week of Cambridge! We're here in Central Square where, on Friday, we saw three stores . The final store near Central Square is a couple blocks north, and it's this Whole Foods with a long history as a supermarket. As you might be able to tell from the outside, it was built way back in the early 1950s as a First National Stores (Finast), then closed no later than 1974. It became The Globe Discount Center, which was closed by 1976, then by 1986 it had become a Bread & Circus natural food store. That chain was acquired by Whole Foods in 1992 but kept its name until 2003, when its stores in the Boston area were conve...

Original Grocery Tenant: First National Stores Address: 267 Lincoln St, Brittan Square, Worcester, MA Opened:  bet. 1943 and 1949 Closed:  bet. 1952 and 1957 Later Tenants:  Phillip Jacobs > General Food Stores > Pennywise Market > North End Market Photographed:  November 2, 2019 and September 9, 2022 There sure are a lot of squares in Worcester. In fact, the Worcester Public Library has an entire page dedicated to listing them. (Side note: the WPL is a wonderful library and I loved it the time I was in Worcester.) So we're here now at Brittan Square, about two miles northeast of downtown, where a longtime grocery store has recently closed. 267 Lincoln Street was first built in 1925, but I'm not sure what was here prior to 1949, when the first listing I can find for this address shows First National Stores (later Finast). In 1927, First National was at 265b Lincoln, which might be the same building, but I'm not sure; 265b was Cloverdale in 1931. The 4200 ...