The Market Report

We've seen a few former grocery stores here in Auburn, a suburb directly outside of Worcester, with the Iandoli , Breault's Market (later Montouris Market), and King Market . Now let's check out some of the smaller former grocers in town. A note on sources:  To get these listings, I've consulted Worcester city directories going back to the 1920s. In the Worcester suburbs, the directories aren't the most frequent, so I have looked at  1926, 1937, 1955, 1961, 1964, 1975, 1982, and 1989.  Also of note: this is far from an exhaustive listing of all grocery stores that have been in this area, although I'll probably eventually post the full thing, this is just what I've been able to photograph. Reading the captions:  A caption such as the following...          |  John Smith (1926-1937) > Joe Jones (1955-1982) ...means that John Smith appears in the directories in 1926 and 1937, and Joe Jones appears in all directories I consulted between ...

Original Grocery Tenant: King Market Address: 77 Southbridge St, Auburn, MA Opened:  between 1955 and 1961 Closed:  between 1964 and 1975 Later Tenants:  unknown > Home Outlet Photographed:  March 26, 2022 The Home Outlet in Auburn near the Worcester border was until recently a Grossman's Bargain Outlet, but long before that, the 22,000 square foot building was constructed in the late 1950s (probably as a smaller building) as King Market, later closing sometime between 1964 and 1975. Notable here is that the original supermarket appears to have been the rectangular building to the right, not the pitched-roof section to the left. That was added between 1960 and 1966, so it's possible it was added by the grocer before it closed, or by a later tenant afterwards. And we're going straight through the weekend, with a Grocery Archaeology survey of Auburn coming tomorrow!

Original Grocery Tenant: Breault's Market Address: 119 Oxford St N, Auburn, MA Opened:  between 1955 and 1961 Closed:  between 1961 and 1964 Later Tenants:  Montouris Market (open by 1964, closed between 1982 and 1989) Photographed:  December 14, 2018 We saw some of the small former grocers in Leicester and Cherry Valley , and we'll see a similar post here in Auburn. There are two freestanding former grocers I'd like to take some time to check out, though, and today's is a small (only about 2,000 square foot) store at the corner of Pinehurst Ave and Oxford St N right near the Worcester border. It's a daycare center now, but the grocery store look is very distinctive, right down to the doors on the side and the railing next to them! It opened between 1955 and 1961 as Breault's Market, which closed in the early 1960s and the space became Montouris Market by 1964 through the mid-1980s. I don't believe it was a grocery store after that, although I'm not su...

Shaw's Opened: 1987 Previous Tenants:  Iandoli Supermarkets Location:  368 Southbridge St, Auburn, MA Photographed:  November 9, 2018; May 3, 2019; September 11, 2020; April 2, 2021; September 18, 2021; and December 8, 2021 This isn't our first Shaw's tour  (also see here ), but I still feel like we've only scratched the surface of the Shaw's coverage I have. The Auburn Shaw's is another store (like Park 'n Shop , across town about two miles south) that I've photographed over and over again because I've been there so many times. The store, of around 36,000 square feet, might look like a very old Shaw's, but it's not actually that old -- it opened only in 1987, but the store dates back much further to the days when Iandoli Supermarkets was here. Shaw's acquired this location along with several others in and around Worcester in 1987, but this is the only one left that hasn't been replaced or renovated extensively. Note also that it ha...

Park 'n Shop Owner: Kevin Meehan Opened:  1982 Cooperative:  none Location:  711 Southbridge St, Auburn, MA Photographed:  November 9, 2018; September 10, 2021; October 5, 2022; and February 1, 2023 It's time for another Park 'n Shop! We saw the Dudley location a while back, and now it's time to tour the Auburn location -- the one I've been much more familiar with, so buckle up, this is gonna be a long post. The store opened in 1982, and from the early 1960s through the late 70s, the space was a Finast. The 25,000 square foot store has some similarities to Dudley, but we'll see that a relatively recent renovation has changed it significantly. More on that to come. While I've been to this store many times, and enjoyed shopping here over the course of the five years I lived in Worcester, I've only photographed it four times. Let's go through each visit! 1. 2018 Tour We enter on the left side of the store to the grand aisle with produce on the left si...