The Market Report

Market 32 Opened: 2021 Owner:  Northeast Grocery Previous Tenants:  Price Chopper (late 1990s-2021) Cooperative:  none Location:  240 E Main St, Marlborough, MA Photographed:  March 26, 2025 It's time for a look at a Market 32! It's been a while since we've seen a store owned by Northeast Grocery, which runs Price Chopper, Market 32, Market Bistro, and Tops stores. This one was built in the 1990s as a Price Chopper, converting to Market 32 in 2021 after some renovation. It's a nice store, but definitely a far cry from the deluxe Market 32 stores . A programming note: this store is actually back in Middlesex County, about eight miles northwest of Framingham  (where today's other post is ). But I inconveniently visited this store less than a week after I finished posting the Framingham-area stores. We also recently saw the Hannaford here in Marlborough , the only other supermarket in town, which is slated to become a Shaw's and closed in September. So now we...

Big Boi Meat Market Opened: summer 2022 Owner:  Maycan Groner Alvarenga Previous Tenants:  Tedeschi Food Shops Cooperative:  none Location:  430 Waverly St, Framingham, MA Photographed:  August 27, 2025 We return to Framingham very briefly to see the city's Big Boi Meat Market, opened in the summer of 2022 in a former Tedeschi convenience store -- I'm not sure what was here before them -- joining locations in Worcester and Shrewsbury , among a few others. Today's other post is a look at a Market 32 a bit outside of Framingham, so check that out here , and tomorrow we're headed south over towards Milford!

Trader Joe's Opened: ca. 2000 Owner:  Aldi Nord Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative:  none Location:  145 Great Rd, Acton, MA Photographed:  May 20, 2025 Welcome back to Acton! On our first pass through town, we saw almost every supermarket in town. Check out the old and new Stop & Shop , the Roche Brothers , Idylwilde Farms , Mei Ya , and Donelan's . But we missed one store: this Trader Joe's, which takes up about 13,000 square feet on the southeastern side of town. Inside, it's a pretty standard Trader Joe's. Produce is on the left side, with dairy and cheese on the back wall. Frozen foods are in the middle, with meat and nonfoods in the last aisle. The grocery aisles run diagonally across the middle of the store, with frozen foods in the middle. This was one of the relatively early Trader Joe's in the Boston area, opening around 2000. The first stores in the Boston area opened in Cambridge and Brookline in 1996. Upright and single-tier frozen foods...

Original Grocery Tenant: West Concord Super Market Address:  24 Commonwealth Ave, West Concord, MA Opened:  1919 Closed:  2013 Later Tenants:  Woods Hill Table Photographed:  May 20, 2025 When we took a look at the West Concord Super Market , I mentioned that the space is now occupied by Woods Hill Table, an upscale restaurant. We now return for a look at the space today! It's a quick post since there's not much to see these days, although as we can see the exterior is very similar. It looks like the restaurant has a replica of the supermarket's original sign. It's nice to see that the building has been nicely fixed up, though, although it's sad that after almost 100 years, the space is no longer a grocery store. The interior of the restaurant looks gorgeous . That's all for this week, and next week we'll see our last two Boston suburb stores. A note: this weekend is going to be packed full of new stores and renovations, so make sure to come back both Satur...

Market Basket Opened: ca. 1960s Owner:  DeMoulas family Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  none Location:  700 Boston Rd, Billerica, MA Photographed:  March 8, 2025 Today's post is a very quick look at the Market Basket in Billerica, MA! There used to be two, but the one a mile and a half north closed to make way for an Amazon Fresh coming at the other end of the mall -- an Amazon Fresh that, of course, never opened. There's also a Market Basket in North Billerica . This store's fresh and modern facade hides the fact that it's a rather old store, dating back to approximately the 1960s. (I couldn't find an exact opening year for this store.) Here's a look at the outside before, and as you can see it had the same rough exterior as Chelmsford . In fact, this store looks a lot like Chelmsford if a bit more dated. Although it's on the older side, it's still 60,000 square feet. I don't know if this was the original Market Basket in this strip mall, ...

Whole Foods Market Opened: 2003 Owner:  Amazon Previous Tenants:  Purity Supreme (1966-early 1990s) > Nature's Heartland (opened 1996, closed by 2000) > Bread & Circus (opened by 2000, converted to Whole Foods in 2003) Cooperative:  none Location:  170 Great Rd, Bedford, MA Photographed:  March 5, 2025 Time for our latest Whole Foods store! Like so many others we've seen in the Boston area, this store was previously a Bread & Circus, but it actually has a much more interesting history than just that. It was constructed in 1966 as a Purity Supreme, and it appears that when that chain was acquired by Stop & Shop in the 1990s, this store was moved into the new-build Bedford location just down the street. The former owners of Purity Supreme then started a natural food chain, called Nature's Heartland, which had opened here by 1996 and closed by 2000. Bread & Circus (owned by Whole Foods) opened no later than 2000, then converted to Whole Food...