TOUR: Bravo Supermarkets - Brockton, MA

Bravo Supermarkets
Open: 2015-2021

Owner: Domingo Diaz

Previous Tenants: Braulio's Supermarket > Met Foodmarkets

Later Tenants: America's Food Basket

Cooperative: Krasdale Foods

Location: 1650 Main St, Brockton, MA

Photographed: July 6, 2019

Just up the street from the former Shaw's we saw yesterday is this store. It's been under a variety of banners, and the building was constructed between 1961 and 1970. I assume the supermarket originally occupied the whole space, which is around 25,000 square feet, but now the supermarket is only half that with an auto parts store next to it. I don't know much about the history, but in 2008, the space was occupied by Braulio's Supermarket, an independent, which became a Met Foodmarket (the only one in MA) by 2012. In 2015, it became MA's only Bravo supermarket, a brand it kept until 2021. That year, it became Brockton's first America's Food Basket, joined by a second in early 2022. I don't know how many times it changed ownership with those name changes, though.

I visited the Bravo back in the summer of 2019, and that's what we're going to be looking at here. I returned in the fall of 2021 and photographed the store again after it had become an America's Food Basket, and you can see my post on the AFB here.

There were still a handful of carts from Met Food around, which may have themselves been secondhand at the time. Now let's check out the interior of the Bravo...

We enter to the produce department in the front-left corner, with dairy in the rest of the first aisle. Meats line the back wall, with frozen foods in the last aisle. AFB kept the store mostly the same, but added a deli and prepared foods counter in the front-right corner.

Above, you can see some freezers that appear to be new, but not yet in use. AFB removed them and added grocery shelving to this first aisle.

The large butcher counter takes up most of the back wall. As we can see, the Bravo was clean and stocked well enough, but aging.

If you look carefully in these pictures, you can also see that the store has secondhand aisle markers and other signage from a Roche Brothers.

Interesting green panels above the meat department here. I don't know if this store previously had more decor, but by the time I visited, it was a little haphazard. As you'll see on the AFB post, they cleaned it up a little bit, but there's still not a whole lot of decor in the store.

The last aisle has frozen foods in cases actually built into the wall, in the style you'd typically see for milk and dairy cases. Here you can also get a look at the aisle markers, and you can see (at the top and center) where the Roche Brothers R logo was removed.

And this front corner area had the customer service counter, which during the switch to AFB was relocated slightly to accommodate the new deli.

Here's a look across the front-end from the produce side, looking at the customer service counter (with a sign that I also believe is secondhand, possibly also from a Roche Brothers).

I'm glad I got to visit this Bravo before it switched to AFB, because now we have a fun side-by-side comparison. Check out AFB here, and tomorrow, we're headed north along Main Street for another international supermarket!