The Market Report

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451 Washington St, Dorchester, MA

Original Grocery Tenant: A&P Address: 451 Washington St, Dorchester, MA Opened: early 1940s Closed: early 1970s Later Tenants: church > CVS Photographed: June 15, 2019 We're checking out two stores here at the corner of Washington and Park near Dorchester Center. This 13,000 square foot CVS was originally an A&P, which opened around the early 1940s and closed by the 1970s. I don't know if it remained a supermarket after that, but by the mid-00s it had become a church, and CVS by early 2019. Across the street is the original location of Daily Table Grocery, the nonprofit grocer that now has several locations in and around Boston. Check that store out here , and tomorrow, we'll head a couple blocks south on Washington Street for our next supermarket!

Happy Supermarket - Dorchester, MA

Happy Supermarket Opened: unknown, before 2007 Owner: unknown Previous Tenants: unknown Cooperative: none Location: 868 Blue Hill Ave, Dorchester, MA Photographed: June 15, 2019 Time to get happy! Welcome to the small Happy Supermarket, an independent grocer of just 3300 square feet. Located on busy Blue Hill Avenue , the store has been in business since at least 2007 but probably for quite a long time before that. Side note: Blue Hill Avenue is a major thoroughfare and divided highway through a lot of southern Boston. When I lived in Boston, I didn't have a car, and Blue Hill Avenue was always a nightmare to walk on. I'm not the only one to have noticed this, and a redesign is coming . Happy Supermarket is definitely a local store for people walking, not driving, as it doesn't have a parking lot. Despite the small size, there's a full produce and meat/deli department here, along with a few short grocery aisles. It's a bit of a distance to a full supermark...

The Grocers of Roslindale & West Roxbury

And with that, we are done with Roslindale and West Roxbury and we're moving right along! If you didn't get to see all of the stores in this area, here's a map of the area and the stores we saw. Coming Up Next Perhaps the geographically largest Boston neighborhood is Dorchester, which tends to be a little more urban than the neighborhoods to its west. It has a lot of sub-communities, and small business districts that form their own neighborhoods like Ashmont, Neponset, Grove Hall, Upham's Corner, and others. But they together form Dorchester in the southeastern part of the city. Dorchester is one of the lower-income neighborhoods of Boston, and has several immigrant communities including from Vietnam, the Caribbean, and Latin America. As such, there's a lot of diversity in the supermarkets, and we'll see quite a few Asian supermarkets in the eastern part, Latin stores in the northwestern section, and an interesting mix of mainstream supermarkets throughout. W...

1230 VFW Pkwy, West Roxbury, MA

Original Grocery Tenant: Stop & Shop Address: 1230 VFW Pkwy, West Roxbury, MA Opened: 1960s Closed: between 2002 and 2011 Later Tenants: Savers Photographed: July 4, 2019 Just around the corner from the Star Market we saw last week in West Roxbury is this Savers, a thrift store that opened around 2010. It took the spot of a former Stop & Shop supermarket, and it actually has quite a few remnants left. You can't see it from the facade, but the building actually is pitched-roof, or at least the center part is. I'm not totally sure how much of the building Stop & Shop took up -- it's a small strip mall, and I believe Savers' footprint is smaller than the supermarket's was -- but my best estimate was that, through expansions, the original 14,000 square foot store became around 48,000 square feet by the time of its closure in the mid- to late-00s (the most specific I can get is between 2002 and 2011). Some shopping carts that I have to assume remain fr...

Amazon Fresh - Woodland Park, NJ

Amazon Fresh Opened: November 7, 2024 Owner: Amazon Previous Tenants: Pathmark > Fairway Market Cooperative: none Location: 1510 US-46, Woodland Park, NJ Photographed: June 18, 2025 Amazon Fresh has lowered its prices! Their pricing strategy has been... confusing at best , but in the last few weeks and months Amazon Fresh has introduced a new ad campaign touting the new lower prices. And yes, they are actually much, much lower. I didn't do a full price comparison -- I took only a quick walk through the store -- but several staple items were quite low. A two-pound box of strawberries caught my attention at $3.79 (not on sale, compared to $5.99 at ShopRite across the street ). Signage is up inside the store and on the storefront advertising the new lower prices in a very easy-to-read red, and a matching graphic is used for Amazon Saver products, such as these on an endcap. Now here's an interesting comparison. Organic Valley lactose free milk is not a pro...

ShopRite - Little Falls, NJ

ShopRite Opened: 1970s in this location Owner: Chuck Infusino Previous Tenants: none Cooperative: Wakefern Food Corp. Location: 171 Browertown Rd, Little Falls, NJ Photographed: June 18, 2025 Welcome back to the Little Falls ShopRite! This is one of the few ShopRites left that's a single-store member, so the owners of this store don't own any other locations. And it's a pretty great store, if suffering from a weird layout due to several generations of expansions and remodels, and an even worse parking lot for the same reason. But since my last visit , the store has seen yet another remodel if only a small cosmetic one. The entrance on the left side of the store takes you into the bakery and produce departments. The specialty cheese department was also previously here, but it's been moved to the deli area on the other side of the store. As you enter the main supermarket, pharmacy is in the front-left corner, with HABA in the first few aisles. Meat and ...