TOUR: Park 'n Shop - Dudley, MA

Park 'n Shop

Owner: Kevin Meehan

Opened: 1960

Cooperative: none

Location: 14 Airport Rd, Dudley, MA

Photographed: October 10, 2020

It's finally time for us to tour a Park 'n Shop! Park 'n Shop is a small chain of currently two supermarkets (Dudley and Auburn), but there's a third on the way in Mendon. The chain originated in Webster in 1918 with a small grocery store, then ultimately building up to a chain with independent supermarkets in Webster, Auburn, Dudley, and Blackstone. As the chain began to struggle, Webster closed in the 1990s, then Blackstone closed in 2022. The chain's founding family, the Pappas family, sold Park 'n Shop in 2021 to Worcester County businessman Kevin Meehan, who has since renovated the two remaining stores.

The Dudley one is tucked away in the back of a strip mall off the main street, but it still seems to do fine. It's the only supermarket in Dudley, and its nearest competitors are a Big Y five and a half miles west as the crow flies, and a very beautiful large Price Chopper three miles to the east in Webster.

You can just barely see the Park 'n Shop behind the trees all the way to the left. I have to assume the Dollar Tree and Home Outlet were originally a department store, like a Zayre or Ames or something.

Heading in, we see that the Dudley store still had the famous carpeted flooring when I visited back in 2020! I believe that it has since been switched to a wood-texture.

The store's grand aisle is on the right side, with produce in the front, then deli and prepared foods in the back right corner. Meats line the back wall with dairy, frozen, and beer on the far left side of the store, and bakery in the front left corner. The store tops out at about 32,000 square feet.

As we see, the store is on the older side but in excellent shape. I have only been here once, but shopped regularly at the Auburn Park 'n Shop and found it consistently clean and orderly.

The aisles are fully stocked and nicely organized... and lined with beautiful carpeting.

There's some interesting merchandising in the perishables departments, such as this curved meat case. The deli department also curves around the back corner.

In the Worcester area I tended to lean towards Park 'n Shop for good meats, since there's a lot of mediocre big-chain supermarket meat around the city. There's a few nice smaller places, too, that we'll see.

I would estimate this decor was installed around 2000.

Up here in the front corner, we see the bakery department. I love Park 'n Shop's bakery. The salted caramel chocolate chip cookies? Amazing.

Park 'n Shop sells Best Yet and Full Circle items from C&S, like most New England independents. Don't forget that C&S is based out of Keene, NH, just 14 miles from the Massachusetts border (and roughly 65 miles north of here). For context, we're in way southern central MA, just a mile from the Connecticut border.

But interestingly enough, the dominance of Bozzuto's in supplying independents in CT and RI doesn't extend into much of MA. There are still Bozzuto's customers around, but far fewer than in those states. Big Y is also partially supplied by Bozzuto's.

Dairy begins on the back wall, then extends down the back half of the last aisle.

In the front part of the last aisle, dairy transitions to beer.

The bakery department is just to the left above, between beer and the front-end...

Before we head into Webster, there's two buildings between here and downtown Webster that strike me as possible former supermarkets. We'll be taking a look at those over the next two days!