The Market Report

Mekong Market Opened:  ca. 2005 in current location Owner:  Anh Truong Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  none Location:  747 Main St, Downtown, Worcester, MA Photographed:  August 26, 2018 and December 8, 2018 Ha Tien Market , down a few blocks south on Main Street, is one of the two larger Vietnamese grocery stores in Worcester. The other is here at the northern edge of Main South where it borders the southern edge of downtown, and Mekong Market isn't actually all that old. It was built from the ground up sometime around 2005, replacing an older store closer to the street on the same property that had been there for a while, but actually itself replaced an older store at 705 Main. You enter on the right side of the store, then turn left to enter the produce department which runs along the front wall. The rest of the grocery aisles run front-to-back in a pretty standard setup, with meat and seafood on the back wall. Frozen and refrigerated foods are on...

  Continuing our trek northeast through Worcester! We came in through the southwest via Webster Square and Main South, and now it's on to Downtown just above Main South along Main Street. There aren't a lot of grocery stores downtown, but downtown Worcester has become a hot area with a lot of development and redevelopment. The Worcester Common is in the middle of the city, bounded by Main Street and City Hall, Front Street at the north, Franklin Street at the south, and Church Street at the east. (The Common most recently made an appearance in The Holdovers , masquerading as Boston Common. More movies than you'd think have been filmed in Worcester.) Within a few blocks of there, most of the city's main buildings are situated -- Union Station and the Central Hub (bus terminal), hospital, library, theater, main post office, and so on and so forth. I spent a lot of time in downtown Worcester, although I got to know the outer neighborhoods really well too. Unfortunately, t...

Get ready for a long one today. Webster Square and Main South are primarily residential, older neighborhoods where there are a LOT of former grocery stores. Many of them are now other small businesses or residences. This is also where I lived, so it was closest to my home base and therefore the easiest to get to. But it's a long post, so I won't be offended if you skip it and come back tomorrow to check out downtown Worcester. But here we go! A note on historical sources:  To get past stores in each location, I've consulted Worcester city directories going back to the 1910s. Here in the city, I'm drawing from  1916, 1922, 1927, 1931, 1937, 1943, 1959, 1952, 1957, 1962, 1969, 1973, 1979, 1985, 1991, 2000, 2009, and 2017.  Also of note: this is far from an exhaustive listing of all grocery stores that have been in this area, although I'll probably eventually post the full thing, this is just what I've been able to photograph. Reading the captions:  A caption such ...

Now it's time to see some of the smaller grocers in the Webster Square and Main South area. A note on historical sources:  To get "past stores" in each location, I've consulted Worcester city directories going back to the 1910s. Here in the city, I'm drawing from  1916, 1922, 1927, 1931, 1937, 1943, 1959, 1952, 1957, 1962, 1969, 1973, 1979, 1985, 1991, 2000, 2009, and 2017.  Also of note: this is far from an exhaustive listing of all grocery stores that have been in this area, although I'll probably eventually post the full thing, this is just what I've been able to photograph. Reading the captions:  A caption such as the following...          |  John Smith (1926-1937) > Joe Jones (1955-1982) ...means that John Smith appears in the directories in 1926 and 1937, and Joe Jones appears in all directories I consulted between 1955 and 1982. That doesn't mean that John Smith opened up shop in 1926 and closed in 1937, he might have started i...

America's Food Basket Owner: Edwin Polanco Opened:  2016 Previous Tenants:  Associated Supermarkets Cooperative:  America's Food Basket Location:  4 May St, Main South, Worcester, MA Photographed:  November 10, 2018; November 1, 2019; and May 23, 2021 America's Food Basket is a cooperative of supermarkets across the East Coast. They represent stores under the AFB and Ideal Food Basket names, as well as a few others, all the way from Boston to Atlanta, with AFB stores in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and Georgia, and Ideal stores in New York and Pennsylvania. Most of these stores are full supermarkets, even if they're on the smaller side . But the Worcester location (which we've seen before ) is the smallest, occupying just 4,000 square feet in a former auto garage that later became Super Then Supermarket  in 2013 and then Associated by 2015 before finally becoming AFB by 2017. (Don't ask me what Super Then means, I don't know.) The ...

Best Supermarket Owner: unknown Opened:  2018 under current ownership Cooperative:  Krasdale Foods Location:  877 Main St, Main South, Worcester, MA Photographed:  November 16, 2018; August 31, 2020; September 13, 2020; November 7, 2020; and October 1, 2022 Welcome back to Best Supermarket in Main South! We actually saw this store once before , right after it went through a somewhat strange transition from a Chinese grocery store to essentially a large bodega affiliated with America's Food Basket and using the Essential Everyday brand, but without ever officially being part of the group. Before that, it was Supermarket 999 and even before, Family 88 Supermarket . It looks from city directories like before it was Family 88, it was called Chinatown Supermarket. After reopening under Latino owners, Best switched to Krasdale shortly after joining America's Food Basket. The store has been rearranged a few times, but it's basically a small store of about 3000 square fee...

Ha Tien Market Owner: Minnie Nguyen Opened:  1989 Cooperative:  none Location:  892 Main St, Main South, Worcester, MA Photographed:  August 24, 2018; May 3, 2021; September 3, 2021; and September 24, 2022 If you've ever bought a pie from a major supermarket and it looks something like this or perhaps this , it was made by Table Talk Pies. They have two large facilities in Worcester, and they're both in the Main South/South Worcester area. Their larger facility is just three blocks off of Main Street -- basically straight across from this little grocery store and keep walking a couple minutes. You can't miss it . Worcester is also home to Polar Seltzer, which is made another mile or so south near College Hill at the Auburn border. But enough about pies and seltzer, let's take a look at Ha Tien Market! I've mentioned that Main South and southern downtown Worcester is home to a Vietnamese immigrant community, and one of the Vietnamese grocers in the area is Ha Tien ...

Plaza Supermarket Owner: Robert de Fernando Monegro Opened:  2008 under current ownership Cooperative:  Krasdale Foods Location:  1000 Main St, Main South, Worcester, MA Photographed:  April 21, 2018; April 22, 2018; September 5, 2018; September 15, 2018; November 9, 2018; March 27, 2021; April 23, 2021; April 28, 2023; May 8, 2023; and September 15, 2023 So I've only photographed this store 10 times, not the extravagant 11 like the Shaw's at Webster Square Plaza . But again, I lived nearby and went frequently, so we've got an extensive look at Plaza Supermarket here in Main South Worcester! This grocery store dates back all the way to 1925, when Abraham Glass owned a grocery store at 998 Main Street (that's somewhere around the middle of Plaza Supermarket, whose address is now 1000 Main St). First National Stores was next door at the same time at 988 Main St, now the far-right side of Plaza (where you can clearly see what used to be a separate storefront). By the ...