The Market Report

Big Y Opened: August 14, 2025 Owner:  D'Amour family Previous Tenants:  Stop & Shop (1980s-2021) > Amazon Fresh (planned, never opened) Cooperative:  none Location:  290 Turnpike Rd, Westborough, MA Photographed:  August 24, 2025 Some of the built-but-never-opened Amazon Fresh locations have been lucky to find new life under new owners, such as Aldi or independent grocers -- but here in New England, regional chain Big Y has acquired three locations. Two Connecticut stores, in Brookfield and Westport , opened relatively quickly, but the Westbprough, MA location spent longer under construction. We most recently saw this location when it was being converted from Stop & Shop, which occupied the space from the 1980s to 2021, to Amazon Fresh. Big Y opened here in the middle of this month. Big Y kept Amazon Fresh's smaller footprint -- about 40,000 square feet compared to Stop & Shop's previous 60,000 -- and an Ashley Furniture has moved into the rest...

Roche Bros. Opened: 2007 Owner:  Michael Bozzuto Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  none Location:  1100 Union St, Westborough, MA Photographed:  October 23, 2021 Welcome to our first Roche Brothers! The chain, based in a Boston suburb, operates 20 stores in eastern Massachusetts under the Roche Brothers, Sudbury Farms, and Brothers Marketplace banners. Their stores tend to lean upscale, with Roche Brothers generally being large, full supermarkets, Brothers Marketplace the smaller-format gourmet-focused locations, and Sudbury Farms in-between. At least I think so -- I've never actually been to a Sudbury Farms. We'll see a few of their stores, which tend to be really nice and impeccably-run. A side note here: as of earlier this month, the Roche family has sold majority ownership in the chain  to the owners of the Connecticut-based wholesaler Bozzuto's. At the time I visited this store (and the subsequent Roche Bros we'll see), they were still owned by th...

Stop & Shop Opened: between 1995 and 2001 Owner:  Ahold Delhaize Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative:  none Location:  32 Lyman St, Westborough, MA Photographed:  October 23, 2021 Stop & Shop has a very significant presence in its home state of Massachusetts, and even in many locations where they've closed, another store remains nearby. That's the case here in Westborough, where a location two miles west closed in 2021, leaving this one going strong. This one is a bit larger than the recently-closed one, measuring around 73,000 square feet all told. It's a second-generation Super Stop & Shop, placing its opening between 1995 and 2001. The first-generation so-called "octagonal" prototype doesn't remain on too many stores (are there still any octagonal Stop & Shops out there?), while this second-generation prototype is extremely common. It first appeared in roughly the late 90s, when it appears to have replaced the octagonal prototype. Stop...