New Oriental Supermarket
Opened: 2005
Owner: Peter Chen
Previous Tenants: unknown
Cooperative: none
Location: 476 King St, Littleton, MA
Photographed: October 9, 2021
There are small Asian-American communities in a few of the Massachusetts suburbs to the northwest of Boston, and serving those communities are a handful of small independent Asian grocers. (In some areas, larger Asian-American immigrant communities are served by larger chain grocers -- but in areas like Littleton, where only 8% of the town's 10,000 people are of Asian descent, there's just not a market for a larger store like an H Mart.)
In Littleton, the New Oriental Supermarket fills that gap, a small store of just 3200 square feet. While I don't know for sure, I think it's fairly likely that prior to New Oriental's opening in 2005, this space was a convenience store or a similar business.
There are a few rows of grocery aisles, some refrigerated and frozen items, and a few cases of produce. I don't remember seeing a meat department. Still, it looks like enough to supply the area's Asian-American community with the foods they're looking for -- which
Market Basket around the corner really doesn't have.
In addition to Market Basket, Littleton has one other bigger supermarket. We'll be touring that tomorrow!
Sounds like it makes sense, offering a smaller amount of items to the smaller amount of people who are likely to use them frequently (and also being available to others who may want them occasionally), while allowing the major stores to deal with the more popular items.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, especially when the communities that use a store like this regularly are smaller in a place like Littleton.
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