TOUR: Price Chopper - Webster Square, Worcester, MA

Price Chopper

Opened: 2001

Previous Tenants: none
Location: 50 Cambridge St, Webster Square, Worcester, MA
Photographed: September 7, 2018; January 26, 2019; September 7, 2020; September 3, 2021; and February 3, 2022

There are two large supermarkets at Webster Square in the southwestern part of Worcester -- today we'll be touring our first, the Price Chopper at Main and Cambridge! The store is just shy of 70,000 square feet and constructed in 2001 replacing an acquired Big D location just to the north of Webster Square we'll be seeing soon. I shopped here regularly in the time I lived in this area, although I shifted most of my shopping to Big Y, Shaw's, and Price Rite because this store had one too many problems starting just before the coronavirus. I was a little tired of getting bread that immediately became moldy and seltzers that were completely flat. I also noticed that during those few years the store manager changed regularly, sometimes multiple times a year. This seems to be one of the more poorly-run Price Choppers in the area, although several are quite well-run.

It's a very standard early 00s Price Chopper, with the grand aisle on the right side. A cafe and prepared foods are in the front right corner, with deli on the right side wall. Bakery is at the back, with produce on the left side of the grand aisle. Meat and seafood are on the back wall, with pharmacy in an island at the front of the first aisle. Frozen and dairy are on the left side of the store, with a liquor store in the front left corner.

This store seems to have gotten minimal investments over the years, and it's seriously declined even in the years I was shopping here. It looks to be extremely low-volume in a massive space, and Placer.ai estimates back that assessment up -- their data shows that this store gets around 40,000 visits per month at the time I checked, as compared to the more than 80,000 visits per month of the Shaw's at Webster Square or the Big Y in Columbus Park.

Even before the coronavirus, the prepared foods department was cut way back. Around 2020, some of the fixtures were removed in prepared foods and deli and replaced with a self-serve refrigerator with packaged foods.

The produce department across the grand aisle. These pictures are mostly from 2020, but we'll see some more pictures in a little bit and we'll see how the store had declined over even a few years.

There's a cheese island in the back between the deli and bakery, but that, too, was mostly cut back over the years until just one side of the island was filled with cheese and the rest was random other refrigerated items. As we see, too, there used to be a service counter for cheese but that was never operational at the time I was here.

The bakery is in the back right corner of the store.

Seafood is up next on the back wall, and that too was cut back. Everyone I knew who lived in this area bought their seafood at Big Y.

Baby and HABA were in the first few aisles, with pharmacy in the front of the first aisle.

Service butcher -- which, over the years I was here in the store, seemed to be stocked and open on the most random schedule.

The grocery aisles, though, were clean and bright. I think one of the problems, though, is that the store is low volume but big, so the products sat for a long time and I would frequently find expired stuff on the shelves.

In a typical Price Chopper layout, paper goods, cleaning, and HABA are in the first few aisles, and grocery is in the rest of the store. That means things like baking goods, pasta, and canned vegetables are at the end of the store instead of the first aisles like most stores.

Another clear way to see the lack of investment in this store: coffin cases, probably original to the store's opening, still line the freezer aisles. And you can see there were as many lights burnt out in the freezers as there were working ones.

I like the ceiling fixtures though! I think this decor package is quite nice, although these days of course it's looking decidedly outdated.

The last aisle has dairy, cold cuts, a small section of freezers, and a big case that seemed to be used for nothing much.

Liquor store in the front corner.

The front end is pleasant and pretty good-looking, although again kind of dated.

There is a big section between the registers and the entrance, though, which makes me wonder if there was previously something else here.

And back to the grand aisle, where the floral department is next to the entrance.

Let's return to the store, with some more pictures I took in 2021 and 2022 when the store seemed to hit its low point. (I actually wrote to Price Chopper corporate after the front door had been broken and closed off with caution tape for several months, the meat cases were covered in spilled meat droppings, and the bathroom was covered in graffiti including way too many racial slurs -- although I guess any racial slurs are too many racial slurs. Some of those issues were fixed shortly thereafter, including a full paint job in the bathroom, but the store never really improved significantly.)

The main thing I noticed over the years -- they kept removing things from the store. Displays, shelves, and other things kept disappearing from the grand aisle as they displayed fewer sale items and shrunk the produce department -- leaving way too much space.

The entire prepared foods department seems to be permanently closed. I just can't imagine this store will be in business for too much longer. All signs point to this location really struggling, even compared to other Worcester-area Price Choppers.

Here's another look at the massive empty space filled with random sale displays on the front end. What was here previously, if anything?

The refrigerator in the last aisle filled with its random selection of water and soda.

But the produce department didn't look much better. It was cut back, and the refrigerators running along the right side of the department were filled with random sodas and other beverages, including entire cases of bottled water. But they could barely even keep that stocked, and I found frequently those beverages were expired. The cases weren't exactly in good shape...

And what's up in the frozen department? I'd regularly see big empty spaces like this...

...but the icing on the cake was really the ridiculous situation when the main entrance and exit doors -- the ones that face the street and bring you into the grand aisle -- were broken and elegantly closed off with a shopping cart and some caution tape for weeks if not months on end. Seriously?

They were redirecting all traffic into the store into the entrance at the other end of the foyer, which was primarily the exit. Admittedly, this was fixed, but after way too long. This is just embarrassing. I would say this is probably the worst supermarket in Worcester, so it only gets better from here! And that includes tomorrow's tour at the other end of Webster Square, so come back tomorrow to check it out!