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...

  We've been in Middlesex County for about two months now, starting in the Lowell/Chelmsford area and then moving south through the Acton/Burlington/Concord area. We're now in the southern part of the county, taking a look at the grocers in and around Framingham! We're only seeing a few stores here -- this is not nearly full, exhaustive coverage of every store around here -- so we're only here for about two weeks, starting Monday. I'm taking a couple days off regular posting until then. We'll take a couple of days to see Ashland, a suburb south of Framingham (which itself is a small city around 70,000 people), then the downtown area, and then moving up north of the city to the route 9 retail corridor with stops in northern Framingham and Natick. And if you're interested in previewing what's next, we're going to head down to the southeastern corner of the state (along with a handful of stops in Rhode Island again), then circle up to Boston. Monday...