The Market Report

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...

Roche Bros Opened:  1995 Owner:  Michael Bozzuto Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative:  none Location:  387 Massachusetts Ave, Acton, MA Photographed:  September 22, 2025 Contributor:  Andrew K. We return the Acton Roche Bros store with pictures from our contributor Andrew to see that a renovation is underway. It looks like it'll probably be a fairly minor remodel, with just a decor change since it doesn't look like more extensive construction work is coming. I believe this is the first Roche Bros remodel to begin after the chain has been acquired by Bozzuto's. This is an attractive store but is right across the street from a new Stop & Shop . Maybe the Stop & Shop is having more impact on this store than they had originally anticipated, or maybe they just felt that it's time for an update. I'm occasionally in this area, so the next time I make it up here I'll have to check out how the renovation is going. Thanks for sending in the pictures,...

Stop & Shop Open: 1996 - December 13, 2024 Owner:  Ahold Delhaize Previous Tenants:  Finast Cooperative:  none Location:  100 Powder Mill Rd, Acton, MA Photographed:  May 11, 2023 and December 16, 2024 Welcome to the old Stop & Shop in Acton! This store was built in the early 1980s, but appears to have originally been a Finast, later becoming a Stop & Shop when Ahold -- which owned Finast at the time -- bought Stop & Shop in 1996. At just over 30,000 square feet, this is a relic, far from the type of Stop & Shops we're used to seeing . And last December, it was replaced with a new store occupying part of a former Kmart two and a half miles north , closing the day the new store opened. But let's tour the original Acton Stop & Shop before its closure! Customer service was in the front-right corner, with produce on the right side. Deli and seafood were in the back-right corner, with meat on the back wall. Dairy and frozen were on the left s...

Roche Bros. Opened: 1995 Owner:  Michael Bozzuto Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative:  none Location:  387 Massachusetts Ave, Acton, MA Photographed:  May 11, 2023 Time for another Roche Brothers! We saw the Westborough location a couple months ago, and this one is very similar. But it's older, dating back to 1995. The 30,000 square foot store was renovated in 2004 , then again around 10 years later. And I don't know what occupied the space before Roche Bros, although there's also a space around the corner that looks a lot like a former supermarket -- so perhaps something was originally there and then moved to this property when it was built in the 1970s. The building around the corner was built around 1960. Speaking of around the corner: a Stop & Shop recently moved into a former Kmart nearby . We enter to the produce department in the front corner of the robust grand aisle on the left side of the store. Service seafood and deli are in an island facin...