TOUR: Shaw's - Shrewsbury, MA

Shaw's

Opened: 1987

Owner: Albertsons Companies

Previous Tenants: Bradlees Food > Iandoli Super Market

Cooperative: none

Location: 50 Boston Tpk, Shrewsbury, MA

Photographed: November 10, 2018; May 6, 2019; October 30, 2020; January 21, 2023; and May 17, 2023

Happy November! We arrive now at the Shaw's of Shrewsbury, MA, just across Lake Quinsigamond from Worcester. (The Belmont Street/Bell Hill stores we saw in Worcester are about two miles directly west on the street this store is on.)

The Shaw's comes in at 64,000 square feet, making it a bit smaller than the Indian Lake and Webster Square stores just over in Worcester. The building was constructed as a Bradlees in the first half of the 1960s, and the supermarket on this site (probably smaller than the current Shaw's footprint) was a Bradlees Food, according to city directories. By the middle of the following decade, the store had become an Iandoli Supermarket, which then became a Shaw's when they acquired the Iandoli chain in 1987. I'm not positive whether the Shaw's today has the same footprint as the original Iandoli, but I think it's possible at some point the Shaw's expanded. Clearly, the exterior has been renovated since 1987. By the way, this store was built on part of the former property of the White City amusement park.

The inside has, too. The store seems to do a respectable business but isn't extremely high-volume -- but it's been kept up so well because of all the competition so close by. A Trader Joe's is directly across the street, a Whole Foods (opened 2018) is just east, a Stop & Shop is about two miles east, and a Price Chopper (opened 2010 replacing an older store) is a mile east of that. Plus, the Shrewsbury Market Basket (opened 2023) is just two miles south. We'll be touring all those other stores as we move through Shrewsbury.

When I first visited the store in 2018, it had an interesting combination of Premium Fresh & Healthy 1.0, this mostly-white decor with colorful department signage, with the historical photos of the newer decor we saw in the Indian Lake Shaw's. Around the time Market Basket opened in early 2023, this Shaw's got a renovation to that decor package -- although it was quite a minor renovation, as we'll see. The store still looks good, and my guess is not a lot of work was needed because it was in good shape.

We enter to the grand aisle on the far left side of the store. Produce lines the left side, with deli and cheese in an island facing. Bakery is in the back left corner, with meat and seafood on the back wall. Dairy and frozen are on the right side, with pharmacy in the front right corner and a few short HABA aisles in front of it.

For whatever reason -- maybe the low ceiling and segmented layout -- this store feels much smaller than its size to me. If I were guessing with no information, I'd probably estimate the store was closer to 40,000 than 60,000 square feet.

Service seafood and butcher at the back of the grand aisle. I don't have a picture of it in this round, but there's also a cheese and packaged deli alcove opposite this at the back of the deli island. The first few aisles were previously natural foods, but that was removed and integrated in the 2022-2023 remodel.

Here's a look at the natural foods area, which had different signage. I assume when this store was owned by Supervalu, there was some form of Wild Harvest branding here.

I always thought this store was nice but very plain. The new remodel, which we'll see shortly, hasn't really changed the blandness of the store that much, but it's nice enough.

I wouldn't be surprised if the flooring you can see in the picture below is from the first renovation Shaw's did here.

Dairy begins in the back-right corner, then continues down the last aisle.

The fixtures seem to be all different ages here. These look to me like older freezers that have been painted.

And dairy lines the outside of the last aisle. I don't think the decor package is really working in this part of the store. You have basically a blank wall and two different kinds of flooring that doesn't really match.

The very plain PF&H aisle markers...

The Osco Pharmacy is in the front right corner. Odd sign placement for "Osco". And here you can also see the short HABA aisles in front of the pharmacy, along with the unusual mixture of the PF&H leaf and the Heritage historical photo. (Even when this store was remodeled to the full Heritage decor package, they removed these photos. I don't get it.)

And looking over at the grocery aisles...

Customer service is on the front wall beyond the registers. This flooring, too, likely dates well before the PF&H remodel. Notice the exit, which is about halfway across the front wall. The entrance is in the front left corner. I can't think of too many other Shaw's with entrances and exits separated like that, so maybe it was an Iandoli or even Bradlees decision.

A snowy Halloween (or I think day before Halloween, actually) brought me back to the store...

I also took some closeups of some of the historical pictures on the walls. Before Shaw's was Shaw's, it was the Brockton Public Market (or later, BPM Grocers). Here's one of their pre-Shaw's stores:

And while I don't know that it's exactly the right location, here's a look at a former BPM store that has the same general style:

(That's my picture from a former BPM in Brockton, which we'll look at more extensively once we get out in that direction.) Another BPM store, also in Brockton...

And while I don't know where in Brockton this store was, there's still a Shaw's in Brockton that looks vaguely like this.

Here's some other pictures from around the store. I'm betting the below one is the same location as the BPM in the first picture.

Alright, so now we return in January of 2023 to see the store undergoing its remodel. It wasn't a major one, but the store looks good nonetheless.

Obviously, work was still in progress at that time. I think it's likely this remodel was driven by Market Basket's opening. The flooring was replaced in the grand aisle, but many of the fixtures were not. Of course, some weren't that old.

I believe the rounded overhang used to be over floral. Now, I think floral is on the front wall on the other side of the entrance, and the greens are where the flower cases used to be.

Bakery looking good in yellow but no department signage yet.

And here's the area with cheese and packaged deli items opposite the bakery and meat/seafood counters.

Looking across the back wall. Note that the lighting has been replaced.

The former natural foods department was being reset so that those items were worked into the rest of the grocery store. We've seen that before in Albertsons-owned stores of roughly this era.

The flooring wasn't replaced on the front end or in most of the store, though.

The reset was (very informally) announced on the aisle markers.

And you can see the bones of the store didn't change, they were just painted.

This section looks a bit better than before, but still, the flooring is disjointed if not terrible.

Pharmacy and HABA in the front corner.

And here's a look at the front-end. I wouldn't be surprised if the supermarket originally ended where the first grocery aisle is now, which I would estimate would place it roughly in the 40,000 square foot range.

And one final visit to the store post-renovation...

Here we can see the new fixtures in produce, which look really good! I do think they did a nice job but it was clearly a rather low-cost renovation. We'll see obvious signs of cost-cutting as we travel around the store.

Deli didn't get any new fixtures as far as I can tell, but it also looks pretty good.

Here's an example of how low-budget this remodel obviously was. Sure, some fixtures were replaced such as the tables for baked goods, but the wall decor is really no-frills. Not ugly, but certainly not beautiful.

Service meat and seafood up next on the back wall. Again, simple decor and no fixture changes.

Notice that the flooring was actually swapped out in the former natural foods aisles, which was a nice touch that I wasn't expecting.

But an example of the very low-budget decor: the aisle markers weren't actually replaced, they just put decals over the existing ones.

Grocery aisles look very similar, and the flooring in the rest of the store wasn't changed...

...even when it should've been, like around the rest of the perimeter. But you can see the reset meat cases with new promotional signage, which looks good.

But I think it's pretty clear they didn't want to invest a whole lot of money into this store -- and it's likely they felt that it was possible they wouldn't survive Market Basket's opening. In that case, I'm sure, they didn't want to pump a lot of money into a major remodel if they might not make it anyway. Maybe over time some of these other things will be addressed.

I do really like these curved overhangs with the lights underneath, and it seems they've replaced the lights themselves with brighter versions, probably LED. You can see in the "before" picture above that one of the can lights was actually burnt out.

The last aisle is finally looking better, with some nice signage but again, pretty cheap. This would be so much nicer with all-new flooring and everything.

The signage for the pharmacy is so pale as to be almost unreadable. Also, notice that it's no longer Osco-branded, although that signage remains on the outside.

And a look at the front end. New self checkouts installed (this store didn't have them when I first visited, and they were slow to add them in when nearly every other Shaw's did).

And that's all for this Shaw's! I of course wish it were a more extensive renovation but sadly that doesn't seem to be in the plans here. Have a good weekend, and I'll see you on Monday with the Trader Joe's across the street!