The Market Report

Central Meat Market Opened: 2001 Owner:  Tony Cabral Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative:  none Location:  113 Gano St, Fox Point, Providence, RI Photographed:  October 11, 2024 On the far eastern edge of the Fox Point neighborhood, where we are seeing Fox Point Grocers , is the Central Meat Market. It's a small, old-school butcher shop with a couple shelves of groceries. I don't know for sure, but it looks like parts of Fox Point are gentrifying or recently gentrified, so it seems like Fox Point Grocers is the "new" Fox Point while this store is the "old" Fox Point. You can see more pictures on their website . The outside was redone relatively recently, and the Fox Point mural on the side is also relatively new. If you go to the older street views on Google Maps , you can see what the exterior used to look like. Tomorrow's stores are about 20 miles south, near the Rhode Island coast!

Fox Point Grocers Opened: 2023 Owner:  unknown Previous Tenants:  Hawes Fine Foods Cooperative:  none Location:  107 Hope St, Fox Point, Providence, RI Photographed:  October 11, 2024 We're here on the east side of Providence for just two stores in the Fox Point neighborhood. This is a pleasant, upscale residential neighborhood just across the Providence River from downtown and a few blocks southeast of Brown University. Fox Point now has a Trader Joe's , but they also have this tiny specialty gourmet market called Fox Point Grocers (previously Hawes Fine Foods). Curation is the name of the game at Fox Point Grocers, as the 500-square-foot store doesn't have enough space for anything but a very carefully selected range of specialty products. The vast majority, of course, are gourmet and/or imported products you won't find at Trader Joe's or Shaw's. And let me put it this way: you're probably not coming to Fox Point Grocers with a budget. Obviously, though,...

Urban Greens Co-Op Market Opened: 2019 Owner:  cooperatively owned Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  Coop Food Stores Location:  93 Cranston St, Providence, RI Photographed:  February 5, 2025 Our next Providence stop is the Urban Greens Co-Op Market, a cooperatively owned natural food store to the southwest of downtown Providence on Federal Hill. It's a new-build store, having opened in 2019 but planned for more than ten years before that. At just 8000 square feet, the store is quite small, and it feels small. Like Daily Stop , I visited this store at night, so it's hard to gauge how well it's doing. But some of the produce seemed past its prime, and the store has been cut back a bit since its opening. Produce and packaged prepared foods/deli are on the right side (there's no service deli here, and actually no service counters at all), with bulk foods facing in the first aisle. Packaged meats and other similar items are on the back wall, replacing what app...

Daily Stop Supermarket Opened:  early 2023 Owner:  Zameeruddin Mohammed Previous Tenants:  non-grocery tenants Cooperative:  Krasdale Foods Location:  85 Whipple St, Providence, RI Photographed:  February 5, 2025 Welcome to Providence's Daily Stop Supermarket! It's a 25,000 square foot store to the northwest of downtown Providence, and a relatively new store having opened approximately in the spring of 2023. The independent supermarket was built in what appears to have been previously an industrial building, and while there are several other grocers in the immediate area, it's the largest in the neighborhood. A much larger Stop & Shop is located across a highway to the north. This store's most direct competition is a tiny Compare Foods just a couple blocks north. Daily Stop is tucked out of the way on a residential and light-industrial side street with virtually no other retail around. We enter to the prepared foods department, which is an outside busi...

Cibao Meat Supermarket Owner: Jose Bernard Opened:  2014 Cooperative:  none Location:  228 Manton Ave, Olneyville, Providence, RI Photographed:  November 19, 2023 Longtime readers of this blog know that I love small, well-maintained complete neighborhood markets, and here in the Olneyville section of Providence we're here to see nothing less. This store, which opened in 2014 and was previously a few other independent grocers, is only 5700 square feet, but packs in a produce department, butcher, dairy, frozen, deli, and a small cafe with a hot food bar. And the place was spotless, stacked to the ceiling with all manner of grocery items. Produce is in the first aisle on the right side, with butcher on the back wall. Deli and hot food are on the left side of the store. Meat must be a large part of the business here! Cibao is a bit larger and more extensive than a bodega, but might fall a little short of being called a full supermarket. At the front of the last aisle is...