The Market Report

Market Basket Opened: ca. early 1990s Owner:  DeMoulas family Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative:  none Location:  49 Pond St, Ashland, MA Photographed:  March 18, 2022 From yesterday's Shaw's , just a mile north is this Market Basket. It was opened around the same time as the Shaw's -- roughly in the early 90s -- but it's possible it moved from an older spot in the mall, which we'll see shortly. Today, the Market Basket is ever so slightly smaller than the Shaw's at around 53,000 square feet, and inside we can feel it's one of the older Market Baskets. Even though the layout is (of course) identical to every other Market Basket and the maintenance is (of course) great, you can tell looking at the flooring and the fixtures, plus some very small things like the fact that cold cuts are here in aisle 1. In later stores, such as Hudson , they're in aisle 2. So aisle 1 is dairy, with seafood, deli, and cheese at the back. Meat runs along the rest of the ...

Shaw's Opened: ca. early 1990s Owner:  Albertsons Companies Previous Tenants:  unknown Cooperative:  none Location:  301 Pond St, Ashland, MA Photographed: March 18, 2022 Hello and welcome to our first Framingham-area store tour, this one a Shaw's about three miles south of Framingham's downtown. This store opened around the 1990s, and it actually appears to have been built as a supermarket -- not a department store, as I originally assumed, although I don't know that for a fact. It was expanded once to its present 55,000 square feet. We enter on the right side to the grand aisle -- it's a very typical Shaw's layout -- with produce in the front-right corner, then deli and prepared foods lining the right side wall. Cheese, meat, and seafood are at the back of the grand aisle, with meats lining the rest of the back wall. Dairy and frozen are on the left side, with bakery in the front-left corner. This store doesn't have a pharmacy, and doesn't appear to e...

  We've been in Middlesex County for about two months now, starting in the Lowell/Chelmsford area and then moving south through the Acton/Burlington/Concord area. We're now in the southern part of the county, taking a look at the grocers in and around Framingham! We're only seeing a few stores here -- this is not nearly full, exhaustive coverage of every store around here -- so we're only here for about two weeks, starting Monday. I'm taking a couple days off regular posting until then. We'll take a couple of days to see Ashland, a suburb south of Framingham (which itself is a small city around 70,000 people), then the downtown area, and then moving up north of the city to the route 9 retail corridor with stops in northern Framingham and Natick. And if you're interested in previewing what's next, we're going to head down to the southeastern corner of the state (along with a handful of stops in Rhode Island again), then circle up to Boston. Monday...

Market Basket Opened: 2013 Owner:  DeMoulas family Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  none Location:  8 Highland Common E, Hudson, MA Photographed:  July 7, 2024 It's time for our final stop in the central Middlesex County area! The Market Basket here in Hudson is the largest store in town, where we've also seen the Shaw's and Stop & Shop . At 75,000 square feet, this is nearly double the size of the much smaller Shaw's. It was built in 2013, so while it's over ten years old it still feels very new. Inside, it's exactly what we'd expect from a Market Basket. Spacious, clean, well-stocked, expansive, and completely boring. The dairy aisle is the first aisle, on the right side of the store. Seafood and deli are at the back of the first aisle with cold cuts in the second aisle, meats line the rest of the back wall, and produce is on the left side. Bakery and prepared foods are in the front-left corner. Market Basket stores get very crowded at busy time...