The Market Report

Whole Foods Market Opened: 2011 Owner:  Amazon Previous Tenants:  Hi-Lo Foods (1964-2011) Cooperative:  none Location:  413 Centre St, Jamaica Plain, MA Photographed:  June 29, 2019 I mentioned in the "coming soon" section that Jamaica Plain has gentrified very significantly over the last several years, and this Whole Foods is the perfect example. As an independent called Hi-Lo Foods, the supermarket became a center of the Cuban community that lives (or, increasingly lived ) in the Hyde Square area. And naturally, its closure and replacement by Whole Foods sparked significant controversy . As for the wonderful midcentury modern exterior of the store, it's apparently original to Hi-Lo . Whole Foods has added several large murals to the building on all sides. It's a largely residential area, and this supermarket is set slightly away from the business district. You enter on the left side of the store to the produce department. Meat and seafood are in the back-lef...

Ruggiero's Market Opened: 2014 under current ownership; ca. 1970s previously Owner:  Jay Patel Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative:  Associated Grocers of New England Location:  3345 Washington St, Jamaica Plain, MA Photographed:  November 13, 2021 Today we're just around the corner from Green Basket Market for a somewhat similar store, a small grocer/convenience store. Like Green Basket, it's around 4000 square feet, but there's a lot more to offer here. Incidentally, the store goes back to the 1970s but was acquired in 2014 by Jay Patel , whose family owns a variety of stores around the city. Right away, you can see the more broad offering than the dated Green Basket Market. There's a food counter on the left side of the store that serves pizza and other food. It looks like they do a good takeout business here. There's a few grocery aisles with various other selections around the perimeter. This is a combined convenience store and liquor store, but there...

Green Basket Market Opened: 2005 Owner:  Hinh Pham Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative:  none Location:  186 Green St, Jamaica Plain, MA Photographed:  November 13, 2021 Welcome to the Green Basket Market, a longtime independent grocery/convenience store on Green Street. It was previously the Green Supermarket and is also sometimes called the Green Street Supermarket. The current owner took over the store in 2005, but I suspect it was a grocery store for quite a bit of time before that. You can tell it's an old building, and you can also get a sense of where it is here. Green Street is decidedly a side street, although it gets its own T stop just a couple blocks west of here. We're in Boston, but we haven't gotten too much of a sense of the historic charm of the city (in large part because, well, there's not much charming about a 90s Star Market ). We've also been in the southern part of the city, which are not the areas you think of when you think of Bosto...

City Feed & Supply Opened: 2007 Owner:  David Warner Previous Tenants:  assorted non-grocery tenants Cooperative:  none Location:  672 Centre St, Jamaica Plain, MA Photographed:  June 8, 2019 In the middle of Jamaica Plain is City Feed and Supply on Centre Street, the larger (and, I believe, newer) location of the natural food store and cafe. The focus is on the prepared foods, but there's also a few short aisles of natural foods as well as a produce department . The coffee/deli/prepared foods counters line the left side of the store, with produce on the right side and grocery aisles in between. It's a high-end, cool and hip store in Jamaica Plain -- very different from Happy Market half a mile south -- and not a place for big shopping, although I recall having an excellent sandwich here. From here, we're headed east to the decidedly less cool and hip, un-gentrified and lower income part of Jamaica Plain near Egleston Square for a look at two independent ...

Tops Friendly Markets Opened: June 8, 2025 Owner:  Northeast Grocery Previous Tenants:  ShopRite (1993-2024) Cooperative:  none Location:  100 Tops Markets Blvd, Ellenville, NY Photographed:  July 2, 2025 Welcome to Ellenville, NY! This small town is about 70 miles northwest of New York City, about 30 miles northeast of Port Jervis . The only major supermarket in town was a ShopRite, built in 1993 by Big V Supermarkets. When Big V went under around 2000, ownership of the ShopRite transferred to SRS, the corporate division of Wakefern. SRS announced in 2023 that they'd be closing this store in the summer of 2024 , shortly after they pulled out of the Capital Region to the north. By late 2023, Northeast Grocery had acquired the five Capital Region stores, reopening four of them as Market 32 in early 2024 after some very light remodeling. Northeast Grocery also took over this Ellenville location, but under its Tops division. It underwent a bit more work than the...