TOUR: Shaw's - Burlington, MA

Shaw's
Opened: 2003 or 2004

Owner: Albertsons Companies

Previous Tenants: none; other stores previously on property

Cooperative: none

Location: 180 Cambridge St, Burlington, MA

Photographed: May 16, 2024

Just practically next door to last week's former A&P is today's Shaw's, a pretty nice but seemingly rather low volume store of around 66,000 square feet. It was built around 2003 or 2004, replacing older stores on the property (but I don't know if there was an older Shaw's or another previous supermarket here).

We've got quite a few different decor packages going on simultaneously here, as we'll see as we tour the store. It looks like it opened with the same decor package as Groton, then was repainted and saw a couple department signs replaced around 2008 in what Acme Style refers to as Premium Fresh & Healthy 1.0 (see this store for example). More recently, probably around 2016, some assorted black-and-white historical photos from the newer decor package have been added. We've seen a similar mashup before, in Shrewsbury prior to its renovation. This winter, though, the store received a full remodel and has the latest decor package. Unfortunately, I haven't been back to photograph it.

The grand aisle is on the right side with produce in the front-right corner and deli/prepared foods in the back-right corner. These departments seem to have been reduced significantly over the years. Seafood and meat are on the rest of the back wall, with bakery and pharmacy in the front-left corner. Dairy and frozen are on the left side.

Even though it's clearly not doing the volume it once did, the deli setup is still quite nice. My best guess is that a Wegmans opening just two miles west, also in Burlington, has hurt this store quite a bit. The Wegmans opened in 2015 and we'll be touring it tomorrow!

This somewhat odd dead-end corner is home to cheese and packaged deli items. You can see this corner is similar to Clinton, which I linked above, and other locations like Shrewsbury.

Part of what I believe was previously a natural foods department is now the Big Deals department, a sale section. That's also rarely a good sign for a store's health.

Over on the back wall, we have seafood and meat on the wall opposite the grocery aisles.

Still, the seafood department was fully stocked and didn't exactly look like a store about to close. It doesn't seem like this store is in danger of imminent closure, but it also looks like it's doing less volume than it was originally intended to.

Decor packages once again crash into each other in the meat department, with the original metal mesh sign next to a black-and-white photo and the lowercase department signage of Premium Fresh & Healthy 1.0.

It's not unattractive, but again the fact that this store hadn't gotten a real renovation since it opened 20 years ago (until a couple months ago) makes me think it's not particularly high-volume.

And although it seems to generally be kept up pretty well, there are parts where it hasn't been, such as the patches visible on the floor.

Pharmacy and bakery are in the front-left corner.

And opposite that is Wellbeing and frozen.

These freezer cases look relatively new, though, and probably aren't original to the store, so this location hasn't been neglected.

Dairy begins on the back wall and then continues down the outside of the last aisle.

I was here pretty late in the day, so maybe the bakery was just depleted, but it didn't feel as full as most Shaw's bakeries. They were missing a couple items I'm accustomed to getting at other Shaw's locations.

And over on the front end, the thank you for shopping sign is left from the store's opening.

It's always interested to see these stores with hybrids of decor from many eras, but it looks like here it probably hasn't been updated because the store isn't doing well enough for that. Above, again, you can see the flooring has gotten quite a bit of patching. It's clean and maintained well enough, but it needed some care that it clearly wasn't getting. Since I haven't been back since the remodel, I don't know how extensive it was.

And that's all for this Shaw's. Tomorrow we're off to the Wegmans!