TOUR: Price Chopper - Main Middle, Worcester, MA

Price Chopper
Opened: ca. late 1990s

Owner: Northeast Grocery

Previous Tenants: McCracken Markets > Iandoli Super Markets

Cooperative: none

Location: 223 Park Ave, Main Middle, Worcester, MA

Photographed: November 4, 2018; January 25, 2019; September 15, 2019; and September 3, 2021

It's time for our fourth (and final) Worcester Price Chopper! (See the Worcester Fair, Sunderland, and Main & Cambridge locations.) We're at the corner of Park and Highland, a few blocks from Worcester Polytechnic Institute's campus, just north of Elm Park and east of a large high school.

This store is rather small for a Price Chopper, at just 36,000 square feet. It also appears that the supermarket originally here, a McCracken Markets built around 1960, was much smaller at only about 18,000 square feet.

I don't know much about McCracken, the original supermarket here, other than that they were bought by Iandoli in 1968. Worcester's 1969 city directory still lists McCracken Markets at this address, meaning that it's possible the name didn't change immediately -- or that the directories weren't accurate right away.

See the four dormers to the right of the Price Chopper sign? The original McCracken Market went roughly from the left side of the leftmost one to the middle of the rightmost one.

This isn't a typical Price Chopper in terms of exterior design or interior layout, so I don't know if possibly some of this is left over from Iandoli. I believe this Iandoli closed by 1987 and Price Chopper was definitely open by 2000 -- between those years, I'm not sure.

It's a pretty attractive exterior for a smaller store, though.

Inside, the store is pretty nice if definitely smaller. We enter on the far left side to the produce department, with the deli lining the back wall between this expansion and the original supermarket building, which goes farther back. Seafood/meat take up the rest of the back wall, with dairy/frozen on the right side. Bakery is in the front right corner. There's no pharmacy here.

I'm guessing that this store was renovated once since it opened, but I'm not sure. I don't believe Price Chopper was using this decor as far back as 2000 or before; instead, I assume it opened with the decor you can see at the Main & Cambridge store.

You can see that the interior is showing its age, although generally it's kept up pretty well. Better than Main & Cambridge for sure, which was a new-build only about 25 years ago. But the layout is a bit awkward with the many columns taking up space in this grand aisle, and the ceiling is very low, and the floor is a bit of a strange color, and the lights are too dim.

But all in all it's not a bad store at all. The floral department is between the entrance and exit on the front wall, along with customer service.

A fairly overexposed picture of the deli at the back of the grand aisle, where it transitions into the main supermarket.

Some signs that the store could be kept up a bit better also include this refrigerator, once home to salads according to the sign above it and now stocked with chips. At the very least, this once had some form of prepared foods or refrigerated deli item.

The prepared foods departments here are small and mostly not stocked, but there is usually pizza out.

And it gets better from here. Seafood and service butcher look really good up next on the back wall.

The Main & Cambridge store's service butcher counter was frequently empty and closed, but in all the times I went to this store, the butcher counter was fully stocked and open.

Again, we can see aging fixtures and some burnt-out lights, but the store is generally in rather good shape for its age.

Frozen foods on the right side of the store. Part of the store's success might come from the fact that it's so close to the WPI campus, so college students shop here frequently. We're about a mile from the Big Y on Mayfield Street and a larger, modern and very high-volume Shaw's is to the north about a mile and a quarter.

You can see in these pictures that the store is showing its age, but it's not in disrepair by any means.

Because of the property's layout, the last aisle is angled because of the side wall of the store running along Highland Street.

You can see the angle here...

And the bakery is in the front corner. Again, it doesn't look bad at all, and in fact it's in pretty good shape -- but it could definitely use some simple fixing up, like new lighting and flooring for sure.

The Bagel Factory, of course, is separate here as is typical for Price Choppers, but it's next to the regular bakery department.

And a look across the front-end...

And that's our last store tour for the Main Middle/Tatnuck area! On Monday, we'll be taking a look at some of the independent grocers across the central and west-central part of Worcester!