Look Inside: Summer Street Grocers - Chelmsford, MA

Summer Street Grocers
Opened: late 2021

Owner: Frank Francione

Previous Tenants: assorted non-grocery tenants

Cooperative: Associated Grocers of New England

Location: 7 Summer St, Chelmsford, MA

Photographed: May 13, 2023

Yesterday we saw a longtime small grocer in South Chelmsford, and today we're here in Chelmsford center to take a look inside a very new small grocer. Summer Street Grocers opened in late 2021, bringing a 4500-square-foot supermarket back to the center of town. (A Stop & Shop closed across the street in 2011, which we'll see briefly tomorrow.) The gourmet market is a member of Associated Grocers of New England.

We enter to dairy and produce on the right side, with deli, prepared foods, and meat on the back wall. A few short grocery aisles and frozen are on the left side. In season, the produce department abounds with local produce...

(Busa Farm, now defunct, was just ten miles away in Lexington. Now it's the Lexington Community Farm.)

In the grocery aisles, we see the Associated Grocers of New England logo making itself known on the price tags. AGNE uses Food Club products from Topco, but Summer Street's smaller and higher-end setup doesn't really leave much room for storebrands.

Summer Street is known for its prepared foods (and breakfast sandwiches), and a hot food bar takes up part of the back row of service departments. Deli, meat, and seafood are on the rest of the back wall.

Summer Street Grocers is located in a small strip mall just off the main drag. This strip mall is arguably the restaurant center of Chelmsford, with pizza, Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Indian, and Cambodian restaurants in the strip along with a deli and a diner. (Chelmsford and nearby Lowell have a significant Cambodian immigrant community.)

Chelmsford also has three major supermarkets, which we'll see shortly. Tomorrow we're headed across the street to see the former supermarket in Chelmsford!