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 back wall, with frozen, produce, and floral on the right side. Bakery and a small prepared foods department are in the front-right corner (no Market's Kitchen here).
Market Basket does many things well, but one of the things they do rather remarkably is have a very respectable cheese department in almost every store, without being a high-end supermarket. There are higher-end and lower-end choices in the cheese department, but few other mainstream supermarkets have as substantial a cheese program across virtually all the stores.
Here's the service deli and seafood counters in the back-left corner.
The grocery aisles, as usual, are immaculate with hardly an open space on the shelves. Market Basket tends to run their stores at a much, much higher staffing level than nearby stores like Shaw's or Stop & Shop.
Meat on the back wall, and there's no service butcher counter although there is a window for special orders.
Aisle 12!
In an extremely old-school setup, these low cases run across the back wall of the store, and butchers can stand behind them to take special orders. Market Basket, of course, cuts the majority of the meat in-store.
Frozen foods on the left side of the store, and below I'm facing the front wall of the store. I wouldn't be surprised if the refrigeration and freezers here are original.
Floral and produce are on the left side of the store.
And, of course, ice cream runs along the side of the produce department (because who doesn't want ice cream with their butternut squash, as you can see above?) Here, though, frozen fruit is also in this section, which makes more sense.
A very small prepared foods area compared to what the later built stores would have, but it's interesting to see the evolution over time. You have to start somewhere! A large service bakery counter lines the rest of the front wall to the right of this area.
And a look across the front end...
This spot, home to Pet Supplies Plus and (formerly) Big Lots, felt to me like it could have been the original supermarket. It's between 25,000 and 30,000 square feet, and it just
has that supermarket look to it. This building and the current Market Basket building weren't originally connected in the same strip mall, either; Historic Aerials shows this was its own small strip mall and the current Market Basket building was a freestanding building until Market Basket opened in the early- to mid-90s.
That wraps up Ashland, and tomorrow we're headed north to Framingham itself for a look at a longtime small grocer on the west side of town!
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