The Market Report

Whole Foods Market Opened: 2003 Owner:  Amazon Previous Tenants:  First National Stores (opened by early 1950s, closed 1974) > The Globe Discount Center (closed 1976) > Bread & Circus (open by 1986, converted to Whole Foods 2003) Cooperative:  none Location:  115 Prospect St, Cambridge, MA Photographed:  July 21, 2019 Welcome to the final week of Cambridge! We're here in Central Square where, on Friday, we saw three stores . The final store near Central Square is a couple blocks north, and it's this Whole Foods with a long history as a supermarket. As you might be able to tell from the outside, it was built way back in the early 1950s as a First National Stores (Finast), then closed no later than 1974. It became The Globe Discount Center, which was closed by 1976, then by 1986 it had become a Bread & Circus natural food store. That chain was acquired by Whole Foods in 1992 but kept its name until 2003, when its stores in the Boston area were conve...

Super Supermarket Opened: 2003 Owner:  Ida Lopez Previous Tenants:  ACME Markets > Foodtown Cooperative:  Retail Grocers Group/General Trading Location:  53 Jefferson St, City of Orange, NJ Photographed:  October 26, 2025 We're back in Orange, NJ, right outside Newark for two of today's posts. Here at the Super Supermarket, just outside downtown, the interior has gotten some small updates and renovation since my last post, when it had gotten a new floor . Small, independent stores like this tend to get incremental updates rather than a floor-to-ceiling renovation all at once. This store is on the smaller side, at around 22,000 square feet, but it's not that small (and is actually the largest supermarket in Orange, which is a small city of around 35,000 people). It's well-appointed for its size, though, with produce on the left side, packaged meats in the back-left corner, and service butcher, seafood, and deli counters on the back wall. Dairy and frozen are ...

Orange Farmers Market Opened: 2000 Owner:  Tony Chyoi Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative:  none Location:  502 Main St, City of Orange, NJ Photographed:  October 24, 2025 Orange, NJ's greengrocer shop, the Orange Farmers Market, is getting a big change. And it happened to be in the process of being delivered on a flatbed truck when I was recently at the store. A long seafood display case was in the process of being rolled into the store and off this truck when I recently stopped by. The store is only 6,000 square feet, so it's quite small. But there are a few aisles of produce, about three grocery aisles, and some dairy and frozen foods. The new seafood counter is going into the back of the store. The old-school store has gotten some updates since I last visited , but the seafood department is the main change. The shelving at the back of the store had been cleared out to make way for the new display case, which I assume is to be installed here along the bac...

ShopRite Open: 1967-2025 Owner: Dara Sblendorio / Sunrise Supermarkets Previous Tenants: none Later Tenants:  vacant Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp. Location: 540 Passaic Ave, West Caldwell, NJ Photographed:  October 26, 2025 A quick drive-by photo to show the now-closed ShopRite of West Caldwell -- the old one, at least, as the shiny new one has opened just around the corner. The space of the old store is for lease , and it looks like they're not looking for another supermarket to move in. (It's possible, although I'm not certain, that Sunrise still owns the property or has some control over a new tenant coming in, so they might not want another grocery store to come in and compete with them.) Here's the rest of the news from this weekend: Saturday An independent grocer prepares to switch from Foodtown to SuperFresh A New Jersey ShopRite expands its kosher department while doing some other updates  (this post) Dumbo Market  and  ALDI  celebrate ope...

ALDI Opened:  November 6, 2025 Owner:  ALDI Sud Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  none Location:  625 Fulton St, Brooklyn, NY Photographed: November 12, 2025 ALDI has opened its latest New York City store, here on the border of Downtown Brooklyn and Fort Greene (Google tells me that this store is just barely in a western corner of Fort Greene). This store is located in a new-construction development, so you can see retail spaces to either side of the ALDI are not yet filled and are still under construction. When you enter through that front door, you walk down a hallway to get into the supermarket, which is set back from the road a bit. The store is around 15,000 square feet, making it roughly typical in size for an ALDI. It's quite a bit smaller than the new LIDL just about four blocks west, though. This store is also within an easy walk of a Whole Foods (previously one of the 365 small-format stores), a Stop & Shop (previously Pathmark), a gourmet-fo...