Look Inside: West Concord Super Market - West Concord, MA

West Concord Super Market

Open: 1919-2013

Owner: Peter and Paul Mandrioli

Previous Tenants: none

Cooperative: none

Location: 24 Commonwealth Ave, West Concord, MA

Photographed: August 7, 2012

Welcome to West Concord! It's about two and a half miles west of downtown Concord, where we saw Concord Market and Crosby's, and it's kind of a secondary business district with several small shops lining the main street, Commonwealth Avenue. For nearly 100 years, an independent supermarket called the West Concord Super Market anchored the business district, opening in 1919 and eventually closing in 2013. By a crazy stroke of luck, I actually photographed it way back in the summer of 2012 when I first visited the area less than a year before it closed -- and four years before I started photographing supermarkets in earnest. The pictures ended up on an ancient laptop's hard drive, which I recently cleaned out, stumbling upon these few West Concord Super Market pictures. (Funny how life works. Ten years after visiting this store for the first time, I started dating someone who lives just a couple minutes' drive from here.) But enough about me. The West Concord Super Market was started over a century ago by John Mandrioli Sr., whose grandsons Peter and Paul Mandrioli were running it when I visited. The Concord Journal has an article on the store's closing that extensively describes its background.

Because it was well before I started photographing supermarkets for real, my interior photos are quite limited. But I did love the salad bar, composed of just a few takeout containers and bowls. The store had a wonderful historic interior, including things like these hanging pendant lights. Here's another shot of the interior from Yelp. The historic outside sign has actually been preserved here in Concord, at a local sign museum (see here, paywall).

On Google Maps street view, you can go back to 2012 and before, and see the supermarket in business. The 4800 square foot building is now occupied by Woods Hill Table, a beautiful upscale restaurant.

"This scale was used here in the 1930s. It was made between 1924 and 1934," says the handwritten sign on this scale displayed at the front of the supermarket. I'm disappointed that I wasn't able to get more pictures of the store, but I'm very glad I got a few to preserve this vital part of the grocery history of this region. West Concord Super Market is gone, but there's now another grocer here in West Concord. We're going to check that out on Monday!