Hannaford
Opened: 2004
Owner: Ahold Delhaize
Previous Tenants: Victory Markets (ca. 1950s-2004)
Cooperative: none
Location: 333 Brook St, Clinton, MA
Photographed: October 2, 2021
Just like so many other towns positioned right on a water source, Clinton was long a mill town, and
many of those mill buildings still exist. Clinton is located at the northern end of the Wachusett Reservoir, on the Nashua River, and with a population of 15,000, it's one of the larger towns in northern Worcester County (excluding, of course, Fitchburg and Leominster, where we're headed next).
As with the other Hannaford supermarkets in the Worcester County area, this store was built around the 1950s as a Victory Market, becoming a Hannaford when they acquired the chain in 2004. The store these days, which has been expanded, is around 35,000 square feet, much smaller than its competitor to the north, a Shaw's of around 55,000 square feet. We'll be there tomorrow.
This store received a remodel to the latest Hannaford decor package over the summer and early fall of 2024, but when I visited a couple years ago, it still had the previous decor package. It's a very nice, if somewhat plain, store.
Hannaford has expanded out the front corner to add a bottle return and cart storage area, which is on the other side of the window you can see below. The arched motif continues on the front wall, which you can see in some of the exterior photos.
Even though it's on the smaller side, this store does appear to have an in-store bakery. There are a lot of baked goods, but definitely a smaller area than most larger Hannafords.
I have always liked this decor package, although we'll see quite a few more really nice Hannafords as we travel through New England. Still blows my mind that Hannaford and Stop & Shop are owned by the same company since there's such an obvious difference in the quality of operations. Wait until we get to Chelmsford, which has one of each.
A look across the back wall.
The grocery aisles are clean and well-stocked, but limited simply because of the store's smaller size.
I love the red tile here. I'm not familiar with seeing that in this decor package, so I wonder if it's left from some previous decor package, or even from Victory.
It looks like there might be a couple generations of freezers and refrigerators in this store, but they're all in pretty good shape.
The store's layout, in case you haven't gleaned it just yet, starts with the produce department in the front-right corner. Bakery and deli are in the back-right corner, with meats on the back wall. Dairy is in the second-to-last aisle along with some frozen foods, the rest of which are in the last aisle. This store doesn't have a pharmacy and doesn't appear to ever have had one, since the Advance Auto Parts in the strip mall was previously a CVS.
It definitely looks like there could've been something in this corner previously, but it's also possible nothing was ever here.
Here's a look at the front-end...
And a look at the store from the street. Hannaford gave the store a light exterior remodel around 2010, and you can see it before
here.
Tomorrow we'll be headed about 2/3 of a mile north to check out the Shaw's, the other supermarket in town! There are a couple smaller grocers in town, too, which we'll see after we finish the other supermarkets in this area. Stay tuned!
Do they carry the fruit bowl our brand products? I did see some Nature's Promise and the Hannaford branded spring water.
ReplyDeleteNot much of that has ever migrated over from the S&S/Giant side.
DeleteMostly a few of the specialty items that will show up for various holidays (like pumpkin flavored whatever or now probably peppermint or eggnog) - those are definitely S&S derived items.
Does this store do Hannaford to Go? Often that is in one of those corner areas (and thus behind the wall for the most part).
DeleteIn some stores, that area used to be for bottle return, so if they added that to the front it may have been there before.
Also, the older stores often had customer service counters (not just the little "island" that they do now) which may have been part of that, and also going back even more they often did photo developing and maybe videos as well in some places, which would also have been up in that front right corner.
So, it could be any (or all over time) of those. They did have in at least one locally a bank as well, but that was built as an "island" structure when they had the entry as an sideways aisle of specials that went left or right into produce. Not sure if other locations had banks in that front area, but it makes sense as other stores do that.
Acme Style, no, Hannaford doesn't typically use the fruit slice products. They have their own brand under the Hannaford name.
DeleteBillyGr, interesting, that could make sense. Thanks!