TOUR: Big Y World Class Market - Spencer, MA

Big Y World Class Market
Owner: D'Amour family

Opened: 1995

Previous Tenants: unknown

Location: 62 W Main St, Spencer, MA

Photographed: October 14, 2019

We're here in Spencer to tour the Big Y just outside of town! Now Spencer's downtown is only 10 miles outside of downtown Worcester, but you really feel like you're in the country. Just behind this Big Y is Charlie's Diner, with an expansive dining room that feels more like a cabin than a traditional restaurant. Down the street is Klem's, the enormous country department store with anything from clothes and shoes to hardware and lawn equipment and a massive paint store. In downtown Spencer, Whitco Sales has any appliance you can think of and more bikes and toys than you can shake a stick at. You definitely don't feel like you're just outside the big city -- although we're definitely in greater Worcester here, as we're still within the 33 bus route out of Central Hub. Or the 19 on weekends, but be advised that only goes to the Spencer DPW instead of the courthouse in East Brookfield. Of course, the courthouse has been gone for several years, but the bus still goes there. It's funny what you pick up when you want to visit all the supermarkets in central Mass but you don't have a car.

So here we are in the Spencer Big Y! The 55,000 square foot store opened in 1995, although the building dates back to around the early 1960s. I assume it wasn't a supermarket before Big Y, though, since it never appears to have been expanded and that's awfully large for a supermarket going that far back. These days, the store was renovated around 2015 or so to the second-newest decor package and it's very attractive.

The expansive grand aisle is on the left side of the store, and bakery is in the front left corner. Produce then lines the left side while deli and prepared foods are on the right side in an island. Seafood is at the back, with meats on the rest of the back wall. Pharmacy is on the front wall, with dairy/frozen on the right side and the cafe in the right corner.

I do recommend the Italian sub (grinder) from the deli here. The day I walked from here to North Brookfield, I got a grinder from the deli and ate it sitting on the grass outside the store in the sun. Very pleasant.

Not totally sure about the hummus placement -- and its color matching the seafood department -- but this area is quite nice, too. We can see some of the fixtures here are older, but some of those have been painted black.

Service meat and packaged meats are on the back wall.

Here's a look at the cheese island at the back of the grand aisle, and pizza is at the back of the deli island...

The first few aisles are natural foods.

The Y customer service desk is left over from the previous decor package. The department signage, though, is new. As the older stores are updated, the newer ones have the circle logo with Big Y in a circle as opposed to just the text.

The "Center Market" is the extra-wide aisle with sale items. Unlike some chains, Big Y never uses this area as a junk area. Instead, it's usually pallets or shelving of weekly sale items.

Frozen meats in the back right corner.

And then dairy is to the right of that. Notice the older dairy cases with newer doors on them.

Big Y tends to do a good job with merchandising each department, including a lot of department-specific signage.

Frozen foods are in the last two aisles.

I believe I mentioned that Big Y used to sell their own Big Y brand alongside Full Circle for organics. These days, it's Food Club and Full Circle, although the Big Y brand remains on certain locally-produced items like bread and milk. I believe Topco used to package the Big Y brand for them.

Dairy and frozen in the last aisle. We can see that the store is spotless and in great condition. It's not old, of course, but as I mentioned before it seems to me that Big Y has higher standards for their stores than many of the big chains.

The cafe is in the front corner. (It was temporarily closed for the coronavirus for a long time in a lot of their stores, hence the outdoor lawn-sitting I described earlier.)

And a look across the front-end. There's an entrance and exit at either end of the front-end.

Spencer is a small town, but not that small with a population around 12,000. There's a second, smaller supermarket in town, which we'll be touring on Monday. Have a great weekend!