Hannaford
Opened: 2004
Previous Tenants: Victory Markets (closed 2004)
Location: 158 N Main St, Uxbridge, MA
Photographed: September 4, 2021
There are no Hannafords in the immediate Worcester area (a shame, since I think generally Hannafords are run quite well), but there are a few in Worcester County. Most are up in the Montachusett region, in Fitchburg/Leominster, but we saw one in
North Brookfield acquired from Victory Markets and here's another acquired Victory store towards the southern part of Worcester County.
This store is just over 40,000 square feet, or about 10,000 square feet smaller than the
Shaw's (its nearest competitor) about three miles north. As far as I can tell, it still doesn't have the latest Hannaford decor package, but it looks really good with the older one.
Hannaford, in my experience, does a really good job of running these smaller-scale, small town stores across New England. They also have plenty of large stores, and we'll see multiple stores at all sizes across the region eventually.
We enter to the grand aisle on the left side of the store, with produce and floral in the front part. Natural foods are behind produce, with deli and seafood on the back wall. HABA is in the first few aisles with pharmacy at the front of the first aisle in an island. Meat is on the back wall with dairy and frozen on the right side, and bakery is in the front right corner.
Ahold Delhaize remains particularly decentralized, and it's amazing to me how different Hannaford typically is from
sister chain Stop & Shop. (That Grafton store is 10 miles north.) The closest Stop & Shop is 9 miles east in Milford. In my opinion, Hannaford stores are consistently far better than their Stop & Shop counterparts.
Here's a look at the natural foods department, with short aisles running side-to-side at the back of the grand aisle. The deli is in the back left corner, with seafood up next on the back wall.
As we see, the store is in excellent repair. No burnt-out lights, and look at that floor!
Here's a look at the pharmacy at the front of the first aisle.
Looking across the back wall of the store. Notice that there's another grocery aisle in the back between the center-store and the meat department.
The grocery aisles are clean, well-stocked, and organized. It's a very pleasant store.
It looks like the meat department cases might be on the older side.
Fresh Dair in the back corner (the y appears to have long since gone). Other than that, the store is in great shape!
Bright blue freezer cases -- some a little older than others.
12 aisles in total, with frozen on one side and packaged bread on the outside.
The bakery is in the front corner. Hannaford's bakery is one part that I think isn't particularly strong, it's definitely adequate but not more than that.
And looking out from the bakery across the front-end...
That's all for this Hannaford! It'll be a little while until we see one again (once we leave Worcester to the north... so that'll be a few months). In the meantime, though, we're off to another small general store in town!
As far as I know, Hannaford was not in MA at all until they acquired that Victory chain.
ReplyDeleteNot sure exactly how many (if any) stores they added after 2004, but of course once their parent company started working with Ahold, the Stop & Shop chain (which had far more stores in MA) kind of took precedence there, with (as I remember) a few Hannaford locations that were sold off to others (including for a short time the odd Tops far from the rest of that chain).
So, that probably explains the lack of their stores in many areas around there, being one of the couple small overlap areas in the two companies (southern parts of NY being the other).
Beyond that, it was a fairly easy "merger" in these chains, with Hannaford being primarily in ME/NH/VT and Stop & Shop being in MA/CT/RI (as they had only tried to put a couple stores in southern NH & ME but those didn't stick around too long).
Hannaford was in MA prior to Victory, at least as early as 1990. That's the year they purchased a chain called Alexander's, which had locations in NH and northeastern MA (Lowell area, I believe -- the Chelmsford store was an Alexander's, and then according to Chelmsford town records, was briefly called Alexander's Hannaford). But those are in a different area from these, and I don't know how many Alexander's there were in MA.
DeleteThat is true -- in the Ahold-Delhaize merger, Stop & Shop was the one that kept its stores. What a mistake, as we now know. Hannaford is doing great with beautiful stores and Stop & Shop is barely getting by.
Found this posting:
Deletehttps://amesfanclub.com/forum/index.php?topic=548.0
If that is all correct from nearly 20 years ago, it looks like 3 stores in MA, about 7 in NH.
Also, a couple comments down is a list of the Victory stores showing 18 for MA and 2 in NH.
Along with information about 4 Martin's stores on the west side of the state (which they still use the name Martins Foods of South Burlington LLC as the registration for their pharmacy here in Valatie, NY - a fair distance away and built long after the stores were all renamed to Hannaford!).
This store was eventually updated with the latest decor package last year. Only within the past couple of years have they gotten aggressive with updating older stores
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theyankeexpress.com/2023/07/14/441312/new-look-hannaford-in-uxbridge-is-a-step-into-the-future
Oh, thanks for the link. I wasn't aware of that renovation but, as you say, it's not a surprise given their current remodeling plans.
DeleteThe font and style of the department signage feels like what I imagine Grand Union might have done in the mid-2000s had they stayed in business. The look of this store is a bit reminiscent of what the Grand Union store in Toms River NJ at Route 9 & Route 70 looked like when it opened.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good point. It's even entirely possible that some of Grand Union's designers eventually worked on other stores, since I have to imagine at least some of the people who designed the GU stores stayed in that business when GU went under.
DeleteI believe this is the Hannaford decor package Sweetbay's was based off of, as the color scheme, department names, and the fonts on the bakery and "fine cheeses" signs are the same as Sweetbay's: https://albertsonsfloridablog.blogspot.com/2020/10/how-sweetbay-it-still-is-to-shop-at.html
ReplyDeleteAh yes, that makes sense! I like both of these decor packages.
Delete