TOUR: Stop & Shop - Grafton Hill, Worcester, MA

Stop & Shop
Opened: ca. 1990s

Previous Tenants: Finast > Valley Discount Foods previously on site

Location: 949 Grafton St, Grafton Hill, Worcester, MA

Photographed: November 4, 2018 and March 31, 2023

It's time for a look at our first Stop & Shop in Worcester! There are three, and the other two are to the north. Don't worry, we'll get there.

We're here at the Perkins Farm Marketplace, a large strip mall that borders the Perkins Farm Preserve between Grafton Street and the southern tip of Lake Quinsigamond. We're at the far southeastern corner of Worcester here, just under two miles from the new Market Basket in Shrewsbury. The mall was built in the mid-1960s and opened in 1967, with a Finast supermarket. That was still there by 1979, but in 1985, it had become Valley Discount Foods. City directories are mum on this property until 2017, when it was listed as Stop & Shop. But from the store model and Historic Aerials, we know Stop & Shop opened between 1995 and 1997. The store is large, at around 66,000 square feet (double the size of the nearby Price Chopper), but not enormous.

The store is very pleasant, though, as it never seems to be overly crowded. Inside was quite the surprise for me when I first visited...

Do you see it yet? We'll get a good look at it as we tour the store, but this location has an extremely rare early Super Stop & Shop decor package that I'm not sure is still in any other location. Notice the flooring is unusual, too, compared to the slightly later variation.

There's very little decor left, as they seem to have removed a lot of it over the years. (Either that or it's the most minimal decor package ever.)

The layout is also slightly unusual, with floral and cheese each in their own alcove on the right-side wall. Prepared foods and deli take up the rest of the right-side wall, with seafood, meat, and dairy on the back wall. Frozen foods are on the left side with bakery and pharmacy in the front left corner. Typically, the cheese department is at the back of the grand aisle between produce and seafood, and this space would be used for natural foods. Or at least that's the more common later version.

I'm not sure what originally would've lined the upright refrigerators behind the cheese department. By the time I got here, it was just filled with assorted beverages.

Here's our first real look at the unusual department signage here! I suppose it's also possible this isn't an actual decor package and is just an amalgamation of assorted secondhand signage from elsewhere, since I've never seen this or any part of it in any other stores or any online pictures. Does anyone recognize it?

Seafood is no longer a service counter. I don't believe this store has been renovated yet. I can't believe this decor has made it this long. I have to assume this is the decor the store opened with, right? Maybe it was painted at some point, and there were originally accents like colorful stripes or something.

Meat lines the rest of the back wall.

I suppose it's also possible this decor is somehow left over from a previous tenant, but I don't believe the building actually remained -- I think S&S built this store from the ground up. Plus, the general setup of the building is almost certainly Stop & Shop.

The grocery aisles are very standard, though, although the original Super Stop & Shop aisle markers remain.

Like many of these massive Super Stop & Shops, the selection has been cut back to sell less general merchandise, but there's still things like an entire aisle of books here. We can see, though, that there's a little bit too much space here.

The Butcher Shop signage doesn't seem to match the rest of the departments. Foods to Go is also different, but deli, seafood, and dairy match.

The aisles are divided in half front-to-back in the nonfoods department, which is quite large.

There is also a small natural foods department in part of one of the aisles.

Here's a good shot of several of the decor elements, with the many Butcher Shop signs behind the Super Stop & Shop aisle markers.

But these stores have an incredibly large general merchandise section, and even though the selection has been significantly reduced (which is obvious in an aisle like this one), there's still a much larger selection of books, magazines, party goods, toys, baby, and hardware. But none of those is quite a full department, they're just larger-than-average supermarket sections.

Another sign they're feeling the store is too large: one side of one aisle stocked with sale canned international foods. Take a look at the items listed on the aisle marker and you'll see exactly why this aisle isn't stocked so much anymore.

Dairy takes up the left side of the back wall. These stores are so wide that the back wall has both the entire meat department and the entire dairy department.

Here's a look at the expansive HABA department extending out from the pharmacy on the front wall.

And a look across the back wall, looking back towards the grand aisle.

Some much newer cases show up here in the frozen department, which lines the last aisle. I believe there are more frozen foods in the second-to-last aisle.

And speaking of things that are different, here's yet another style of signage for the frozen foods department. The multiple secondhand signs theory makes sense with the placement of some of these signs. Because the design is so disjointed, I have a hard time picturing what the decor package would've looked like originally, and I think it's more likely there were various signs available for use that were just placed together here and then painted to match. On the other hand, it's not unheard of at all for a decor package to use multiple fonts and signage styles across the different departments.

And for yet another one, we have Custom Cakes over the bakery department.

(That's quite a nice bakery for Stop & Shop, by the way.) So now we have at least five signage styles: the script for Foods to Go; the all-caps serif for deli, seafood, dairy, and pharmacy; the wide serif for butcher; this handwriting for floral and bakery; and the bold sans-serif for frozen. Obviously, they're harmonious enough all together that I could see them being part of the same decor package, but it's so many different fonts and sign types that it's also possible it's not.

The pharmacy sign all but disappears on the big wall over here. Maybe once this decor was much more colorful like this. (Check out how they painted some of the department signage there to be more neutral. Maybe the same thing happened here.)

And a look at the front-end. Unfortunately, the other two Stop & Shops in Worcester aren't quite as exciting as this one, but I look forward to hearing what you all think about this store -- and if anyone knows anything more about its history and decor!