Medina's Market
Owner: Jose Medina
Opened: 1992
Cooperative: none
Location: 2705 Main St, Springfield, MA
Photographed: November 20, 2023
Welcome to Springfield! This is, despite the fact that I lived under 50 miles from it for five years, a city I know very little about and have only been to once. My coverage, therefore, is quite a bit spottier than I want. But we have a few stores to see in the city! Hopefully, though, someday I can get back to Springfield for a lot more coverage.
Our first stop is this longtime independent supermarket. Medina's Market has been here in the North End of Springfield since 1992, but the building actually dates back to at least the 1950s. In the late 90s, Medina's constructed a major expansion to the space, expanding the original 5000 square foot building to its present 13,000 square feet. You can see more about the store's (and former owner's) history
here. Although the Medinas came from the Bronx, I don't know if they have any relation to the Medinas who own supermarkets across the Bronx. At the very least, I don't believe the Jose Medina who owns this store today is the same Jose Medina who owns two Mott Haven supermarkets.
Stepping inside the store, we find that it feels much older than its age. It looks like most of the fixtures used in the store's expansion were secondhand. Some of the decor is likely left over from before the renovation, too.
Frozen foods and single-serve beverages line the first aisle, with dairy and a large service butcher on the back wall. That wall would've originally been the left-side wall of the old store. I would assume that the above fixture (and possibly the entire butcher counter) is left from the old store. Packaged meats are in the last aisle, at the back of the store. Produce is in the far right corner of the store, with registers and customer service on the front wall facing the parking lot.
The store feels stuck somewhere between a bodega and a full supermarket. Although there's pretty much a full line of grocery items, there are very limited choices. The store uses Best Yet brand products from C&S, but they're not a member of any cooperative.
The service butcher counter clearly hasn't been changed in a very long time. Check out that yellow butcher case!
The butcher counter is clearly the busiest part of the store. It didn't seem that many people were doing a full food shopping here actually filling their carts.
Packaged meats are in the last aisle on the back wall of the store. It looks like the orange fixture might be older than the white one. You can see how the store's sales floor has a kind of dead-end hallway in the far corner -- that's where the produce department is.
Here, I'm standing in the very back of the produce department looking out into the main store. As you can see, this is a very old-fashioned setup, and it doesn't seem like they sell a lot of produce. The selection is extremely minimal, focused on simple, mostly shelf-stable items -- no leafy greens, limited fresh herbs, minimal fruit, and so on. There are two long produce refrigerators, one on each side of this hallway area, but only one was stocked.
And a look at the front-end, with customer service under the mirrored window office area. Produce is visible in the far left corner. You can see that this is a strange combination of a rather newly-built store with some much, much older elements that remain. But there are very few grocers in this part of Springfield, so this store is important.
That's all for Medina's, and up next we're headed east to the Liberty Heights section of town tomorrow!
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