TOUR: Park 'n Shop - Auburn, MA

Park 'n Shop
Owner: Kevin Meehan

Opened: 1982

Cooperative: none

Location: 711 Southbridge St, Auburn, MA

Photographed: November 9, 2018; September 10, 2021; October 5, 2022; and February 1, 2023

It's time for another Park 'n Shop! We saw the Dudley location a while back, and now it's time to tour the Auburn location -- the one I've been much more familiar with, so buckle up, this is gonna be a long post. The store opened in 1982, and from the early 1960s through the late 70s, the space was a Finast. The 25,000 square foot store has some similarities to Dudley, but we'll see that a relatively recent renovation has changed it significantly. More on that to come.

While I've been to this store many times, and enjoyed shopping here over the course of the five years I lived in Worcester, I've only photographed it four times. Let's go through each visit!

1. 2018 Tour

We enter on the left side of the store to the grand aisle with produce on the left side, deli/prepared foods on the right side, floral in the front, and bakery at the back. Meat lines the back wall with frozen in the middle of the store and dairy on the far right side. A wine and beer department is in the front right corner.

The store has always been small but immaculate, with a large emphasis on local and unusual brands. Still, the store's selection is very mainstream, in large part because of its size.

But it's always been kept up very well. The original owners, the Pappas family, sold the business to local businessman Kevin Meehan in 2021, and we'll get there, but for right now let's stay in 2018 when the floor was still covered by glorious carpeting...

The bakery department is at the back of the grand aisle, and I've always found their bakery to be exceptional.

And on the back of the deli island is the cheese department. The Pappas family was Albanian, so you can count on them to have great feta. Worcester and its surroundings have a large Albanian community.

Here, the carpeting extended throughout the store but a wood-texture lines part of the perimeter.

Here in aisle 1, we see the back of the deli island. Notice the unusual split aisle markers.

Customer service at the front of the first aisle...

There's no service meat department here, but there is a butcher window we can see here. Park 'n Shop has excellent meats from what I've tried and what I hear.

Frozen foods go right up the middle of the store, and it's possible that's even left over from the Finast days.

The last few aisles are shorter to accommodate frozen sale meat items and eggs.

Dairy runs down aisle 9, which is the last aisle. You can tell it's a smaller store, with only 9 aisles.

And wine/beer in the front corner...

Don't forget about this hanging red metal structure. The store will go through several rounds of renovation but that will always remain!

I don't recognize the carts (our friend Retail Regents, I'm sure, will chime in) but it looks like they may be secondhand. The handles say Park n Shop but the logo areas on the cart itself have blank red stickers.

2. 2021 Renovation

Now we come back for our second round of pictures, shortly after the new owner Kevin Meehan took it over. When Meehan bought the chain, he did some updates to the stores -- not major renovations, but cleaning up, resetting, and maybe most notably, replacing the floor.

Inside, the store was a bit more modern, but still old-school. The new flooring looks great! Then again, it won't last long, as we'll find out.

Here's a look at floral and prepared foods in the front of the grand aisle, with the new flooring extending throughout the store.

We can see some of the new displays and merchandising here.

Still, there's no change to the decor, but it was in very good shape.

The majority of the store stayed the same, though, when ownership changed. The store sells Best Yet and Full Circle products.

Here's a look across the bakery department in the back corner. Notice the new fixture here.

Remember how I said the bakery here is really good? Just take a look at this...

...featuring my hand for scale.

The new flooring looked really good throughout the store!

And we can see here that the store is clean, organized, and well-stocked.

But no changes to the fixtures in the majority of the store.

This meat department window is in the back right corner of the store. The coffin case under the window is now seafood, but there's no service seafood here.

Cold cuts transition to dairy in the back right corner. 

So it wasn't a big renovation, just a quick refresh and new floor.

After some time, it became clear that a larger renovation was needed. The aging store had problems with uneven flooring, and there were increasing signs of wear and tear. Plus, a former colleague of mine who lives in the area told me when they looked at doing more extensive work, they found asbestos and a few other bigger problems to address. So now we move along to...

3. 2022 Closure

The store temporarily closed in mid-September 2022 for a renovation. The plan was to only close the store for two or three weeks, get some simple work done, and reopen. Once the work was started, though, it became clear the store needed more renovation. After several months of construction, the store reopened in February 2023.

I visited the store in the fall of 2022 once it had closed.

It was strange to see the very familiar store closed up, and I can only imagine the feeling when a longtime local supermarket closes for good. Here, at least we get a happy ending. I suspect the renovation may have also been prompted by the opening of Market Basket in Shrewsbury just eight miles east on route 20 from here.

The store stayed mostly stocked while it was closed with the shelf-stable general grocery, but of course all the perishables were long gone.

The right side of the store had been closed off with tarps, and I assume the majority of the work was going on behind that but I don't know for sure.

So now we move along to...

4. 2023 Reopening

The store reopened on February 1, 2023, and I was here in the early evening of that day. It was a cold one, getting down into the teens (and I was stranded in the parking lot when the bus I was supposed to take back to Worcester didn't exist, then the later one inexplicably didn't stop at the stop. I called a friend with a car).

But enough about that! Let's head in and see the renovation! And right away, we notice the decor still hasn't been changed, and our red metal structure is still hanging above much of the store, but the flooring is all new all over again.

The layout hasn't changed, and many of the fixtures haven't changed either (although some were replaced), but they were all painted for a very harmonious look.

The new flooring has several different textures across the store, including a fake slate tile with fake wood around the perimeter.

None of the departments had been moved around, as the bones were left. But much of the decor is new (the lettering remains but mostly everything else was changed with a bit of a retro look).

The biggest change is in the center store, where new moulding has been added to the top of the grocery shelves, with new lighting focused on the products. The lighting was also replaced throughout the store.

And yet the aisle markers haven't been changed! I think the store looks great, but I really wanted some new, exciting decor.

Still, I appreciate the old-school look of the interior which I think matches the personality of the store a lot.

The decor has been simplified, though, with a lot of the more complicated signage cut down to just the department name.

The new trim on the cases and the shelving looks really good, but I was hoping for something more modern.

The liquor area looks really good, too, and I wonder if this signage is new since notice in the past the only signage here said "Beverages."

And a look at the front-end, with the hanging red metal structure still here! And that's finally all for the Auburn Park 'n Shop...

Some of these Worcester-area stores are going to be long posts for sure, since I've been able to go back over and over and over again. So feel free to skim! Speaking of that, tomorrow we're doing another double-tour just to the north of here!