TOUR: Price Rite Marketplace - South Worcester, Worcester, MA

Price Rite Marketplace

Opened: ca. 2009

Previous Tenants: none
Location: 542 Southbridge St, South Worcester, Worcester, MA
Photographed: September 23, 2018 and September 6, 2019

There's no longer an A&P, a Warehouse Economy Outlet, or a Goretti's at College Square, but just three blocks north on Southbridge Street, a new-build Price Rite opened around 2009. The somewhat abnormally-shaped store is around 35,000 square feet, built on a former industrial site constrained by other buildings around it and train tracks. (Directly behind this store is one of the Providence & Worcester Railroad's yards.)

While the store isn't that old, having been built around 15 years ago, it was renovated in 2018 to match the new Price Rite Marketplace format. Price Rite is Wakefern Food's (ShopRite) discount store banner, so it's always been a discount store and still is, but I would say the rebrand cleaned up the stores quite a bit with a more streamlined look. Here's this store's produce department prior to the renovation.

Living not too far away, and frequently in search of cheap groceries, I went to this store quite a bit when I was in Worcester. But I photographed it twice, once in September 2018 when the renovation was just wrapping up, and then again a year later to show the store fully post-renovation.

Produce, meat, and cold cuts are in what amounts to the grand aisle on the right side of the store, with dairy on the back wall. Frozen foods are on the far left side, and baked goods in the front left corner. In the renovation, Price Rite added the "Drop Zone" in the first few aisles with pallets of discounted merchandise.

Over time, Price Rite has reduced its own brand in favor of the existing Wakefern brands, Bowl & Basket and Wholesome Pantry, which are sold here at very cheap prices. There's also some things under the Price Rite brand, and some name-brand items, but the focus is on storebrands. Unlike a store like ALDI, there's a large international selection, too, in most Price Rites, and there's a more complete grocery selection rather than random and limited choices. With most Price Rites in the 30-50,000 square foot range, too, there's room for more selection than in smaller-format stores like LIDL and ALDI.

The Sweet Spot and other dessert items were briefly put in the grand aisle, then moved into the front-left corner of the store around 2019.

There's also things not typically found in discount supermarkets, such as fresh and frozen whole fish and fillets. There are no service departments in most Price Rites, although the other location in Worcester does have a deli, as does one location in Providence, RI.

The grocery aisles are a typical discount store environment, with products in their cases on warehouse-type shelving rather than typical grocery shelving.

There's plenty of space for bulk items or for large quantities of merchandise, too.

Still, there are more international foods than you'd expect at a place like ALDI or LIDL...

Dairy is on the back wall.

The last aisle has frozen foods and sodas...

Here's a look at an example of a Price Rite-branded product, using the new logo. Previously the packaging looked like this. It looks like this is one of the items that is now under the Bowl & Basket name. In the past, other stores including North Shore Farms and a few others bought Price Rite-branded items from Wakefern; I'm not sure how those arrangements work now.

Then we see some Wholesome Pantry items, too. The rollout of Wholesome Pantry was confusing and a bit chaotic, as a replacement for the older ShopRite Organic brand and its instantly-recognizable but kind of terrible packaging. WP was rolled out beginning in 2017 and finished in 2018, then inexplicably re-launched in 2020 with a new logo. Now, in my opinion, the 2018 packaging you can see here was just awful and cheap-looking, and the new one is much better although extremely bland. (O Organics is my current favorite organic brand packaging.) But the decision to completely rebrand and make a big noise of changing your organic storebrand just two years after you already did that is a questionable decision to me. It doesn't matter, Wakefern is doing just fine and will continue to beat basically every other chain in their core market area, but there are just some confusing things going on there.

No deli here, but packaged cold cuts on the back wall.

And a look at the back corner...

Here's a look at frozen foods in the last aisle...

...and the front-end.

Now let's head back for the official grand reopening, happening in September of 2019! Not much had changed since a year prior, but they finished up the last few changes they were making and streamlined the store a lot more.

Walking in, we see new lighting in produce and some new merchandising and signage, which all looks really good. This store has stayed looking really good over the last few years, too, although of course it's a discount supermarket.

The bones haven't changed since the check-mark Price Rite Grocery Depot days, but the store looks much better cosmetically.

The Drop Zone replaces a row of produce cases that used to funnel all traffic to the back of the store, so there wasn't a cut-through in the front to get to the front-end.

I like the Drop Zone, and I think it emphasizes the discount format without making it feel completely impersonal and unappealing.

Moving along into the grocery aisles...

...and here we are again with some promotional signage directing us to the Wholesome Pantry products. As you can see, Price Rite (and ShopRite) were both heavily promoting the relatively new brand at this time, only to change course and redo it all the following year. Strange, but understandable (I don't think this logo or branding is particularly good, but why didn't they get it right the first time around?).

The store definitely has the look of a discount supermarket, but there's also pretty much a full selection. It would just be under storebrands or offbrands.

One whole aisle is international foods, and here that's mostly Latin American foods.

Looking back over to the produce side of the store...

Frozen foods are in the last aisle. I believe, though I'm not 100% positive, that they painted the walls between my original 2018 pictures and these. I can't fully tell if it's a camera lighting thing, or if it's actually how the walls are. That, too, would be a strange decision -- the walls were previously white, so they would've painted them twice in the same renovation?

Here's the new baked goods corner in the front left corner of the store.

And the new front-end. Notice, again, that they put up graphics around 2017-2018 only to remove them again in 2018-2019. So strange!

And wrapping up with a night exterior picture...

That's all for this Price Rite! Come back tomorrow to check out the independent grocers in this part of the city!