The Market Report

Welcome to the first Grocery Archaeology Roundup post! In and around Worcester, I have a lot of long-ago grocers -- many independent stores once built into houses or apartment buildings, some from so far back that they didn't even use a brand name beyond the owner's name. Rather than doing a post each, at the end of the group of towns or neighborhoods, I'll be doing one post that takes a quick look at each spot. Using the Groceteria method of consulting city directories, I have listings for what each location was roughly every 5-10 years from 1916 up through today. Today we're looking at Leicester (pronounced "lester") to the west of Worcester (pronounced "wuhster"), and an unincorporated community within Leicester called Cherry Valley. 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...

Crossroads Marketplace Owner: Zahoor Tariq Opened:  2005 Cooperative:  none Location:  1060 Main St, Leicester, MA Photographed:  October 14, 2019 and October 2, 2020 Crossroads Marketplace is a small convenience store/deli right in the center of Leicester, MA. It looks to me like it might have previously been more of a grocery store and now it's more of a liquor store/deli/convenience store. It also looks like new ownership has added a pizzeria inside the store. At about 8,000 square feet, the store is larger than the average convenience store, too. Hard to say how old the store is, but the building dates back to the 1970s, and prior to its construction an independent called Leroux's Market and, before that, an A&P had been in a smaller building on this property. If you're interested in grocery history like that, you're in luck! Tomorrow we have a new feature to check out the history of grocery stores in Leicester!