The Market Report

And now it's time for a little bit of time off. (That is, after you've read today's post on the Hannaford in Lunenburg !) That means it's The Market Report's winter break! I'll be taking the next roughly two weeks off from posting -- although I always seem to come up with all kinds of updates and special reports to fill the time, so who knows -- and once we return on Monday, January 6th, we'll be back in northern Massachusetts with a look at the Lowell and northern Middlesex County area! So may your days be merry and bright, and may all your holiday dinners be delicious and free of family drama. Happy holidays, and I'll see you in 2025!

Hannaford Opened: unknown Owner:  Ahold Delhaize Previous Tenants:  Shop 'n Save (opened 1994) Cooperative:  none Location:  333 Massachusetts Ave, Lunenburg, MA Photographed:  April 7, 2023 Welcome to the Lunenburg Hannaford, the only one in Worcester County that wasn't previously a Victory Market (let me know if I'm wrong about that, but as far as I can find, this is it). It was constructed next to a department store that's now a Walmart -- I would imagine it was originally an Ames or something like that -- as a Shop 'n Save that opened in 1994, and I don't know when it switched to Hannaford although it was before 2008. It's 52,000 square feet -- a bit smaller than the Twin City Mall one in Leominster , three miles southwest. But it has the same decor package and same beautiful look overall, and feels like a very new store. Obviously, much more upscale than the Market Basket a little over a mile away , but there isn't a particularly large price gap be...

Market Basket Opened: early 1970s Owner:  DeMoulas family Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  none Location:  399 John Fitch Hwy, Fitchburg, MA Photographed:  April 7, 2023 Ah, Market Basket. How New Englanders love thee. And one of Market Basket's strengths is consistency -- no matter how old the stores are, they all look basically the same and they're maintained exceptionally well. Plus, the majority of the stores have been opened, rebuilt, or expanded within the last 20 years or so. They have an incredibly consistent store fleet for a chain of around 100 supermarkets (and counting). So today's tour is something highly unusual: a Market Basket that hasn't been touched much since its opening in the early 1970s. It's received a small expansion, no later than 1985, out the right side (and in fact, you can just barely make out a slight difference in the tones of brick on the right in the below picture). Today, it's a little shy of 40,000 square feet -- very, ve...

Grocery Square Opened: December 13, 2024 Owner:  Sachin Goel Previous Tenants:  assorted non-grocery tenants Cooperative:  none Location:  845 1st St, Secaucus, NJ Photographed:  December 15, 2024 The town of Secaucus is probably familiar to most either as a pass-through while on the turnpike, or as a pass-through by way of Secaucus Junction train station (where almost all NJ Transit train lines intersect). But the isolated town -- surrounded on all sides by the marshes of the Meadowlands, the Hackensack River, or highways -- also has 22,000 residents, and until last Friday, no supermarkets. (There is a newly-renovated and high-volume Walmart Supercenter in town, along with a small grocer, Green Farmers Market, in part of a former ACME .) On Friday the 13th, after a long wait , Grocery Square opened up in a 25,000 square foot space previously occupied by a variety of non-retail tenants. The space is slightly awkward because it wasn't designed for a retail stor...