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Special Report: Key Food Supermarkets - Manchester, CT

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By Zachary
Key Food Supermarkets
Opened: October 30, 2024
Owner: Jeffrey Perez
Previous Tenants: Shaw's > Save-A-Lot
Cooperative: Key Food Stores
Location: 425 Broad St, Manchester, CT
Photographed: October 31, 2024
Welcome to Manchester, Connecticut! The Hartford suburb is home to several supermarkets -- a very nice Big Y, a very bland but inoffensive Stop & Shop, a ShopRite with Pathmark roots. The new kid on the block is a roughly 25,000 square foot Key Food, opened just before Halloween in a former Save-A-Lot that itself was carved out of a Shaw's vacated when the chain left Connecticut. It's owned by the same Key Food member as the Hartford location, which opened in a former Save-A-Lot in 2020. Other Key Food locations have sprung up across Connecticut under different owners, including one in East Hartford just five miles west -- also a former Save-A-Lot. Save-A-Lot, of course, was a discount supermarket, a no-frills shopping experience. So the before and after here is particularly impressive when you consider that just a few years ago, the view below looked like this instead.
Floral and produce line the left side of the gorgeous new store, with packaged meats in the back-left corner. A service meat and seafood counter takes up the center of the back wall, with dairy on the right side of the store and frozen in the second-to-last aisle. (There are only seven aisles here total.) Deli, a hot food counter, and bakery are in the front-right corner. The layout is almost identical to the Hartford store, but the decor is quite different.
The store is very spacious, and I was here on its second day of operation (the soft opening was on October 30 and the official grand opening will be on November 15). So there may be things that weren't fully set up yet. Still, the store was looking pretty spectacular. The decor is simply beautiful but the produce also looked great, the meat and seafood were very nice, and the grocery selection is extensive given the smaller space.
There are a few shorter shelves of sale items at the back of the first aisle, with packaged meats lining the corner.
The decor continues to be impressive through the rest of the store. The high ceilings help the store's beautiful interior design, and I am a big fan of the polished concrete here for this decor. It's a big change from the decor that was previously in this store.
Looking up towards the front of the store...
You can see here that the packaged meats kind of wind around the corner in the back here, with the service counter roughly in the middle of the back wall or maybe a little to the right.
Once again, the decor is beautiful and the setup is great, too. The meat room is visible, so you get the sense of butchers hard at work, but the service counter is set in front of that separated from the prep area with a wall so it's more in line with the rest of the store.
The grocery aisles look completely different from how Save-A-Lot did, too.
Key Food has been expanding very rapidly for the last 10 years or so. They are up to around 400 locations (I think just under 400) and operate stores in New York, New Jersey (where they're based), Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Maryland, and Florida. They aren't exactly showing any signs of slowing down with their expansion, and not every store they open lasts of course, but the majority do. Around 10 years ago, they were a cooperative of around 100 stores. That's a pretty significant increase. Some of that growth comes from opening brand-new stores like this one, some comes from acquisitions such as those they acquired from A&P in 2015-16, but the majority of the growth comes from conversions of existing supermarkets: independent store owners who choose to join Key Food with their existing store or stores. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of stores have left rival cooperatives, like Krasdale (CTown/Bravo) or ASG (Associated/Met/Pioneer/Compare) to join Key Food. In fact, in just the last couple weeks, three Pioneers switched to Key Food under the name Global Fresh Supermarket in New York City.
But back to Manchester! Nonfoods are in aisle 5; aisle 6 is frozen and aisle 7 is dairy.
Another look at the meat and seafood service counters on the back wall...
To the right of those service counters is the milk case, which is actually left over from Save-A-Lot. Those coffin freezers in front of the meat and seafood counters may be left over, too, but I'm fairly confident the rest of the fixtures and obviously all of the decor have been replaced.
Here's a look at dairy and frozen in the last two aisles.
Even though frozen isn't on a perimeter wall, they haven't forgotten about the decor here, a great touch. I love thoughtful design like this.
And a look at the dairy department in the last aisle...
A hot food bar is at the front of the dairy and frozen aisles, with a small deli facing the front-end.
Customer service is just around the corner from the deli. I'm a big fan of the decorative ceiling over the registers; I'm less excited about the fact that the register lane numbers are printed on paper and taped to the posts. I'm pretty sure that'll be fixed soon enough, though, since the rest of the store looks so good.
And that wraps up our look at the brand-new Key Food of Manchester! I'm sure we'll see more Key Foods in Connecticut -- and elsewhere -- so keep your eyes open. I'll be there to check them out!
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