TOUR: Seabra Foods - Fall River, MA

Seabra Foods
Opened: unknown

Owner: Antonio Seabra

Previous Tenants: unknown

Cooperative: none

Location: 440 Stafford St, Fall River, MA

Photographed: October 14, 2024

It's been quite a while since we've toured a Seabra Foods! The one here in Fall River is the last stop in town before we start heading east and north, after we've visited Portugalia and Amaral's (it goes without saying that there's a large Portuguese community here). The store is around 30,000 square feet and, while I'm not sure when it opened, was renovated around 2020. It also appears to have been expanded since it first opened, given a somewhat unusual layout.

We enter and turn 90 degrees to the left to walk along the front of the store for the produce department. Seafood, meat, and deli/prepared foods line the left-side wall and grocery aisles run side to side, with dairy and frozen at the back. Bakery is in the back right corner, and in the expansion out the right side, several aisles of Portuguese foods run front-to-back with registers at the front. Seabra, of course, focuses on Portuguese and Brazilian foods, but it's also a general supermarket.

Here's a look straight back from the entrance. The registers and the international aisles are to the right, and you can see the doorways where the two parts of the store meet. It's quite an interesting building (and the outside, too, suggests this once was something other than Seabra Foods) but unfortunately my usual sources aren't turning up many historical records. Anyone know what was here previously?

These days, Seabra is looking very good and the only supermarket within this neighborhood. Others are on the outskirts, including Market Basket, ALDI, and Stop & Shop just to the south. Amaral's is about 2/3 of a mile west. We're just a mile and a half north of the Rhode Island border, and a little under two and a half miles southwest is Tom's Market in Tiverton, RI, which I posted last year.

Not quite the bacalhau room that Portugalia has, but it's still here!

And the rest of the seafood department continues along the left-side wall of the store.

The service butcher counter is also there, with packaged meats behind it. In the below picture, we're looking towards the back of the store on the left side.

Here's a look at this area before the renovation.

The grocery aisles are clean and well-stocked, and fairly straightforward. Seabra sells Best Yet and Full Circle items, and isn't a member of any cooperative.

As you can probably see from these pictures, the selection in the grocery aisles is extremely mainstream. The more varied international items are all in a separate department.

Prepared foods (although a smaller selection than many of the NJ stores) and deli in the back-left corner, with dairy and frozen extending out to the right. I still really like this decor, and I think it works well even in the smaller and older stores like this one as compared to the flagship one in Newark.

Cheese, a small cafe seating area, and rows of baked goods are between the freezer cases at the back of the store.

And packaged bread and dairy line the last aisle, at the back of the store...

The large (as you might expect) bakery department is in the back-right corner, and here you can see the prep area is actually in the expansion, through the doorway here.

Looking across frozen foods again, back towards deli...

To the right below, you can see the entrance to the international foods department, or Mercearia da Nossa Terra (grocer of our land, roughly).

I would assume prior to the expansion, registers lined this wall. It's also possible that the store has always had this layout as long as Seabra's been open.

The international foods area doesn't seem to have gotten quite the same renovations as the rest of the store, and in fact it looks like the only significant changes were new shelving and a paint job on the ceiling. The flooring was not replaced and the walls weren't changed.

Here's the first aisle in the international section, and you can see the doorways to the main supermarket below to the right.

I believe there are three or four more long international aisles here, along with a few freezers at the back.

The walls display posters of the various imported foods.

And the front-end, including the customer service counter, is at the front of the expansion and international foods room.

That's all for Fall River, at least for now. But tomorrow, we're headed to a small town to the southeast of here right on the MA-RI border. And if you missed them, here's a full list of what we saw this weekend in New York and New Jersey...

• A Met Foods in Brooklyn converts to SuperFresh
• Two NJ SuperFresh stores have been sold
• The new ShopRite in Watchung nears completion
• A struggling gourmet market in South Orange closes, with plans to reopen
• Food Bazaar prepares its largest Brooklyn store
• A third supermarket opens in Brooklyn's Gateway Center
• East Flatbush gets a new Food World in a longtime supermarket building
• A Brooklyn gourmet market opens its first New Jersey location