The Market Report

ALDI Food Market Opened: 2020 Owner:  ALDI Sud Previous Tenants:  assorted non-grocery tenants Cooperative:  none Location:  321 Speen St, Natick, MA Photographed:  May 17, 2022 Our last stop in the Framingham area is a very quick look at the ALDI in Natick, practically just across the street from yesterday's Wegmans . It appears to be a bit larger than 20,000 square feet, which would mean it's on the bigger side for ALDI. The store opened in 2020 and has the latest decor package inside. And a note on what's to come: we're about 15 miles west of Boston here, but before we move into the Boston area, we're going to turn south for a look at the southeastern corner of Massachusetts (and we'll briefly return to Rhode Island for a handful of stores). Come back tomorrow to read all about it!

Wegmans Open: 2018-2023 Owner:  Wegman family Previous Tenants:  JC Penney Cooperative:  none Location:  1245 Worcester St, Natick, MA Photographed: May 17, 2022 Welcome to the famed Natick Wegmans! This store made news when it opened in a former JC Penney department store in 2018, occupying over 130,000 square feet on two floors. The store contained multiple restaurants and food service outlets inside, some of which closed shortly after opening but others that continued on until the end. And yes, here, in a truly unusual situation for Wegmans, there was an end. The upstate New York-based chain tends to open stores at a rate several times that of their closure rate -- which is very  close to zero -- but this Natick location couldn't make it and closed in 2023 . It's a large location, and one located at the back of the Natick Mall where visibility was rather low. It was accessible to the mall on both levels (you can see that below), but Wegmans doesn't typical...

Whole Foods Market Opened: ca. 2000 Owner:  Amazon Previous Tenants:  none; older store previously on site Cooperative:  none Location:  575 Worcester Rd, Framingham, MA Photographed: September 27, 2024 Welcome to the Framingham Whole Foods, located on route 9 just north of downtown. The store is 44,000 square feet and was built around 2000. It doesn't look like there was any other store here before Whole Foods, but I'm not sure of that. It was renovated extensively in 2019, giving it the exterior design it currently has, and before that the facade made it look remarkably like a former A&P Centennial . But the building was constructed between 1995 and 2001, replacing an older store on the same property that was farther west and much smaller, facing route 9 instead of the side street. You can see the exterior design has certain similarities to the Shrewsbury location , which is also on route 9, 17 miles west. That makes sense, since this store was renovated righ...

Seabra Foods Opened: unknown Owner:  Antonio Seabra Previous Tenants:  Stop & Shop > Sunshine Country Cooperative:  none Location:  208 Waverly St, Framingham, MA Photographed:  April 18, 2019 Today's snapshot is a quick look at the Seabra Foods in downtown Framingham. The Portuguese supermarket chain from Newark, New Jersey opened here in the early to mid-00s (or at least that's my guess -- it might have been a bit earlier, but it was definitely before 2008). This is a very small Seabra, it looks like around 8300 square feet, carved out of a former Stop & Shop that later became a local store called Sunshine Country. The Stop & Shop was built in the late 50s. There are six Seabra Foods locations in New England, mostly to the southeast of here in the Fall River-New Bedford area. An additional six are around Newark, New Jersey (with one coming soon to South River  near New Brunswick), and an unrelated group of four Seabra's Market locations i...

Tesoros Supermarket Opened: before 2008 Owner:  unknown Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative:  Krasdale Foods Location:  80 Hollis St, Framingham, MA Photographed: April 18, 2019 and March 18, 2022 The Framingham train station is right in the middle of the city's downtown, and several blocks of commercial businesses radiate out from it. The big-box retail is to the north on route 9 in northern Framingham and Natick, but the downtown has all kinds of small businesses in the storefronts. A block over from the train station is Tesoros Supermarket, a small but complete supermarket of just 5000 square feet. I first stopped by the store way back in 2019, and took the picture below, but in 2022 I returned and took the interior photos. You might notice that in the 2019 picture below, the storefront said Tesoro Supermarket, and in the 2022 photo above, it said Tesoros Supermarket. Inside, the store is extremely compact but has everything you might need. Produce and frozen ...