TOUR: Foodland International - Lowell, MA

Foodland International
Opened: 2021

Owner: unknown

Previous Tenants: assorted non-grocery tenants > V-Mart Market

Cooperative: none

Location: 123 Church St, Lowell, MA

Photographed: October 8, 2023

Lowell is best known for being the city where Market Basket, the powerhouse regional chain with five locations in town, originated. But various other supermarkets have come and gone throughout the city, including Hannaford, which currently operates a supermarket to the east of downtown. Downtown Lowell today has two supermarkets: a relatively small Market Basket just west of downtown, and this independent store called Foodland International to the southeast of the city center.

Foodland International is a supermarket of about 12,000 square feet, and has a really interesting mix of international products along with some grocery basics. It takes up part of a uniquely-designed former department store; a big-chain supermarket was originally at the other end of the strip mall. More on that soon. A side note: the store is now called Food Basket International, but it doesn't look like anything much has changed.

We enter to the produce department in the front-left corner of the store. Refrigerated produce, dairy, and single-serve beverages line the left side of the store, with service seafood and a halal butcher at the back. Because the store is very deep but narrow, there are several segments of aisles, with frozen foods at the back of the grocery aisles. In the front-right corner are nonfoods and bulk packages.

The store isn't particularly beautiful, although it's clean and well-stocked. But the draw here is the enormous variety of international selections. There are significant selections of foods from Latin America and the Caribbean, India and south Asia, the Middle East, and a few other regions.

The focus, though, seems to be Indian and South Asian food, which represents a large community here in Lowell and some of the neighboring suburbs. Many of these leafy greens and other vegetables, I know only by sight, having seen them in international supermarkets. But that the South Asian leafy green vegetables above are displayed right next to queso fresco is impressive.

Here's another example: chapati and tortillas next to each other in a dairy case.

Here we can see the beverages -- mostly very mainstream sodas and the like -- alongside the beginning of the frozen foods department. In the back is a service halal butcher and a seafood department.

There are a couple smaller stores that sell halal meat and other halal groceries, but this is the only larger supermarket with those selections for quite a distance.

Frozen foods are at the back of the grocery aisles.

The shelving looks more like what we've seen in Indian supermarkets like Patel Brothers, for instance, than in a mainstream supermarket. And Indian and South Asian products figure significantly into the product mix, but there's also African, Latin, Caribbean, and regular ol' American products.

This store was previously another independent international grocer called V-Mart. It looks like another V-Mart remains at 176 Narragansett Ave in Providence, RI. It also looks like Foodland replaced most of the fixtures when they opened (here's what V-Mart looked like inside). I'm not 100% sure what V-Mart's layout would've been, but it looks like produce and meat were at the back with grocery aisles in front. And I don't know how long V-Mart was in business, but it looked pretty rundown.

In the last aisle, freezer cases are built into the wall on the outside the way we typically see with milk or dairy cases.

In the front of the last aisle, we have several rows of large bags of rice and kitchenwares.

Sale items on pallets take up space between the grocery aisles and the registers.

And here's a look at the whole store overall. You can tell it's not a particularly large store, but there's a lot packed in.

And I love the exterior design! Of course, I wish the ceiling were exposed so we could see the original roofline inside, but oh well.

Now, as I mentioned, this was originally a department store with a supermarket at the other end of the mall. These days, that space is a gym, but originally...

Original Grocery Tenant: Stop & Shop

Address: 55 Church St, Lowell, MA

Opened: ca. 1960

Closed: unknown

Later Tenants: assorted non-grocery tenants

Photographed: October 8, 2023

...the 20,000 square foot space on the right side of the mall was a Stop & Shop with a beautiful angled roof! This design is pretty similar to what Lidl was doing a couple years ago in their new-build stores.

Like the supermarket, Choice Fitness has a drop ceiling across the store, meaning the high angled ceiling is no longer visible inside. Still a very cool building design.

And that wraps up Lowell! Have a good weekend, and on Monday we're headed south to North Billerica.