TOUR: Market Basket - North Billerica, MA

Market Basket
Opened: ca. 1990 in current location; ca. 1960 in previous location in strip mall

Owner: DeMoulas family

Previous Tenants: none

Cooperative: none

Location: 199 Boston Rd, North Billerica, MA

Photographed: July 8, 2023

Welcome to another Market Basket! Yesterday I posted a small former A&P across the street which was built in the 1950s, and the following decade, this strip mall was constructed with a roughly 20,000 square foot Market Basket. By 1995, Market Basket had built a new store at the opposite end of the strip mall, which is the one that's now in business. It's around 50,000 square feet. There's a very important note I must make here: the town we're in is North Billerica (which is, of course, just north of Billerica). And that's pronounced bill-RICK-uh, not bill-ER-i-ca as you'd assume. At least it's not as bad as Woburn, ten miles south, which is pronounced WOO-bin.

Inside, it will not surprise anyone that it looks exactly like all the other Market Baskets we've seen so far, with one small difference. Dairy is on the left side, with service deli and seafood in the back-left corner. Meats line the back wall with frozen and produce on the right side. This store does feel a bit older, though, and likely hasn't been renovated since it opened, and therefore it doesn't have a Market's Kitchen. Instead, the front-right corner is only home to a bakery. Notice, too, that the flooring is yellow and white rather than the now-standard salmon and white.

You can also see the customer service counter here in the front-left corner.

Another very minor difference here: cold cuts are in the dairy aisle rather than in the first grocery aisle.

You can see I'm really grasping at straws here trying to describe the differences among Market Baskets since they're so consistent!

You can tell this one is on the smaller side, though. And because we're so close to Market Basket's home territory, there are more stores that are older and smaller in this area than there are in other areas. Market Basket has stores across eastern Massachusetts and in Rhode Island, southern New Hampshire, and southern Maine.

Like every other Market Basket, though, this one is spotlessly clean and exceedingly well-stocked.

But we can tell it's older from some things like the older coffin freezer cases to the left below. Newer stores have all upright freezers.

And looking back across the back wall towards the dairy aisle. I'm fairly certain the big yellow guy on the left below is a large Goldfish, given the display of snacks underneath him.

Here's a look at the bakery, with older-style displays (compared to Westford, for instance) in the front-right corner.

And here's a look across the front end to wrap up our visit...

This also wraps up our look at the Lowell area! We're not done with Middlesex County, though, and unfortunately this is an area where I don't have 100% coverage. Still, we're going to see a lot more of the county, including starting in Wilmington which is about eight miles southeast of here. From there, we'll move through the central part of Middlesex County from east to west, ending up back near the border of Worcester County. So let's begin that group tomorrow!