TOUR: Stop & Shop - Shrewsbury, MA

Stop & Shop
Open: before 2007 - 2024

Owner: Ahold Delhaize

Previous Tenants: Shaw's (?)

Cooperative: none

Location: 539-571 Boston Tpk, Shrewsbury, MA

Photographed: October 23, 2021

This is an interesting one. Supermarket nerds like myself can tell something's unusual here. To the untrained eye, this 65,000 square foot Stop & Shop doesn't look like anything out of the ordinary, but notice the dark green accents across the storefront -- even on the window frames. Notice how different the store design is from their typical one for 90s stores. Here's what's interesting: this store appears to have been built as a Shaw's. And it looks like it didn't make it for all that long as a Shaw's, either. Incidentally, Stop & Shop just recently closed this store as part of their 2024 store closure announcement.

(Don't believe me? Check out the exterior similarity to the Shelton, CT ShopRite, which was built in the 90s as a Shaw's and then became a ShopRite when Shaw's pulled out of CT in 2010.) From Historic Aerials, we can confirm this was built between 1985 and 1995, and judging by the size and setup, I'm gonna say it was towards the latter end of that range. I don't actually know whether this store ever opened as a Shaw's -- was it intended to replace the Shaw's just under two miles west? Did they add this store and then find they were too close together? -- but the best I can do is find that by 2007, the earliest Google Maps street view available, it was definitely a Super Stop & Shop. Stop & Shop remodeled it between 2011 and 2015 -- my guess is on the very early end of that range -- with what must have been one of the last yellow and purple interior remodels (S&S began using the subsequent decor package in 2011). So all around, this is an interesting store. Well, in its history and timeline only. Once we get inside...

...a few nice features, like the high ceiling and arched beams, aside, it's a rather boring store. It was never remodeled with any of the newer decor packages (side note: as far as I can tell, none of the Worcester County Stop & Shop stores have gotten renovations since 2018, and of those in the Framingham area and west, only four of the 33 stores have been renovated since 2018).

I'm betting that this was not a particularly high-volume store. It felt very quiet (not dead, just calm) when I was there, but when you look at certain details like the reduced deli counter -- a change made for the coronavirus but, in many stores, either reversed or modified in some way -- I don't think this store did a particularly good business. Placer.ai shows that this store got around 50,000 monthly visits -- a perfectly respectable number, but Shaw's to the west gets around 10,000 more, and Price Chopper to the east gets nearly 10,000 above that. But I don't think those estimates are particularly accurate a lot of the time.

The grand aisle is on the left side of the store, with floral, prepared foods, and deli lining the left side wall. Meat and seafood are on the back wall, with natural foods in the first aisle. Dairy/frozen are on the right side of the store along with HABA, with bakery and pharmacy in the front right corner.

If this was in fact a Shaw's, it looks like Stop & Shop replaced many if not all of the fixtures at some point. This refrigeration especially looks distinctively Stop & Shop to me, and I didn't see any fixtures I recognized from other Shaw's locations of this era.

There's a section for sale items like we see here, in a double-wide aisle. This store, unlike some other S&S locations we've seen, didn't feel too big -- it felt like all of the space was used well, and there were no big empty spaces. That's one of the reasons the closure surprised me; it didn't feel in imminent danger of closing when I visited. Even the service seafood department made it all the way to the end.

The decor, too, doesn't strike me as particularly related to Shaw's decor -- Stop & Shop likely did a larger renovation here at some point.

The grocery aisles are clean and well-stocked, or at least they were when I visited.

And in true Super Stop & Shop fashion, there's a large nonfoods selection with plenty of general merchandise. But it wasn't an overly large selection, and it felt appropriate rather than a filler.

This flooring in the HABA aisles feels, again, distinctively Stop & Shop with no relation to what I know of Shaw's. Since the interior feels so strongly like a Stop & Shop rather than a converted Shaw's, I do have to wonder whether Shaw's ever actually opened here.

Again, the setup of the last aisle with half dairy and half frozen on the outside wall feels distinctively Stop & Shop, not Shaw's. So at the very least, Stop & Shop did a major renovation on this location, if they did move in after Shaw's closed.

The route 9 corridor is also a heavy Stop & Shop corridor! There was another until recently just three miles east, with yet another two miles beyond that. We'll be seeing those soon enough, but first up, let's check out the Price Chopper just east of here tomorrow!

Also... today marks eight years of The Market Report! See more here.