Look Inside: D'Errico's Market - Worcester, MA

D'Errico's Market
Open: ca. 1990s in this location; 1947 previously; closed 2024

Owner: Rodrigo De Oliveira

Previous Tenants: Argento's Market

Later Tenants: Vitoria Meat Market

Cooperative: none

Location: 141 E Central St, Shrewsbury Street, Worcester, MA

Photographed: November 10, 2018; April 12, 2022; and January 21, 2023

Shrewsbury Street once was (and still, to a certain extent, is) the center of the Italian community of Worcester, so it's only logical that the street once had many Italian markets. None are left, though, but the last one standing is (was?) D'Errico's Market, just off Shrewsbury on Central Street. We can trace a grocer with the last name D'Errico way back to Peter D'Errico at 173 Shrewsbury Street in 1922, then Vincenzo D'Errico at 177 Shrewsbury Street (both now a parking lot) in 1927, then Peter D'Errico again at 151 Shrewsbury from 1931 to 1952. By 1957, D'Errico's was at 143 E Central, the large brick building to the right of D'Errico's (the sign remains there; for years after the grocery store moved it was an Italian restaurant they also owned). They remained at 143 E Central (or 145 E Central, the same building) until at least the mid-90s or so, opening in their current location around the mid- to late-90s, by 2000. During the 1970s and 80s, the current D'Errico's Market was occupied by another grocer called Nick Argento's Market. Worcester-based photographer Stephen DiRado, who's long been interested in retail and stores (and who I happen to know has lived in this neighborhood for decades), actually captured the interior of Argento's Market back in 1985 (see here for the full series). The store closed within a few years of that picture.

D'Errico's (which, by the way, is pronounced "duh-REE-co's", not "DER-rih-co's" as I thought when I first came to Worcester) has been through a few ownership changes over the years, and when I was living in Worcester Rodrigo De Oliveira was the owner. In early 2024, he sold the store to a Brazilian butcher chain called Vitoria Meat Market. I'm not sure who the owner of that chain is. But let's turn back the clock a bit, not all the way back to 1985, but to 2018, when I first visited this store. A butcher/deli counter lined the left and back sides of the store, with several grocery aisles in the middle, a small produce department on the left side, and some dairy/frozen on the right side and on the front wall.

It definitely wasn't a full supermarket, but I wouldn't hesitate to call it a grocery store.

It wasn't the focus, but there were also some basic nonfood items like garbage bags and paper goods.

The store, at the time of my first visit, had just switched from White Rose to Krasdale so you can see the Krasdale products on the shelves, but the White Rose leftover tags...

And an overview of the back of the store, with butcher counters lining all the outside walls.

Then, in 2022, D'Errico's embarked on some renovations of the space. The past few years hadn't been particularly good to D'Errico's, and the grocery selection kept getting smaller and smaller. I don't know if you could attribute it to the coronavirus, but foot traffic definitely declined, too. It was really starting to age, and was shifting from being a pleasant old-school market to a rundown outdated store. So the renovations were much-needed, but they were also rather surprising to me at least...

Here's, unfortunately, the only "during" picture I have, since I didn't really go inside when the store was under renovation. But we can see what it looks like after the remodel was done...

The interior is much more modern-looking, with all new flooring, a lot of new fixtures, new lighting, and lots more space. They accomplished this, as you can probably tell, by essentially eliminating the grocery aisles and instead expanding the refrigerated and frozen selection. Produce stayed pretty minimal, but there was definitely some.

And, of course, the butcher and deli cases remained around the outside of the store. My guess is that over time, people stopped doing their whole food shopping here -- as people switched to bigger chain stores, the older and loyal customers moved away or died, and so on -- and the coronavirus definitely didn't help matters.

It's also true that the Italian population of this part of the city has been declining for years, so there was less and less of a need for an Italian supermarket and possibly more of a need for a specialty market you might go out of your way for.

It's interesting to see how the grocery stores mirror the ways their neighborhoods change! And as a last-minute addition, here's a quick look at Vitoria now that the store has transitioned, from a visit to Worcester I made late last month...

Tomorrow we're headed just north of Lincoln Square for a look at a former supermarket there.