The Market Report

Trader Joe's Opened: November 2024 Owner:  ALDI Nord Previous Tenants:  Staples Cooperative:  none Location:  230 Fortune Blvd, Milford, MA Photographed:  August 24, 2025 In a way, Trader Joe's stores are like Market Basket stores -- it's hard to tell exactly how old they are from just looking at them since they tend to use a timeless design that's relatively consistent across the stores. So I was surprised to find that this Trader Joe's in Milford is still very new, having only opened in November of 2024 (I visited in August 2025, so shortly thereafter). The approximately 20,000 square foot store occupies a former Staples in a mall north of downtown Milford. This is only the second Trader Joe's in Worcester County (the first was out in Shrewsbury ); there are 25 Trader Joe's across Massachusetts. You enter to the produce department on the left side of the store, with cheeses and deli across the back wall. Frozen foods are in the middle of the store, with ...

Price Chopper Opened: 2012 Owner:  Northeast Grocery Previous Tenants:  none Cooperative:  none Location:  167 W Main St, Hopkinton, MA Photographed:  August 24, 2025 Welcome to Hopkinton! This town of just under 20,000 is home to a relatively new Price Chopper, which is the only supermarket in town. It's a 40,000 square foot store that was built in 2012, and it still feels pretty new inside. Hopkinton did also previously have an independent supermarket in town, Colella's , which stood on Main Street for 70 years. You can see more about the store on this Facebook page . A Starbucks and a cafe are in the front-left corner. The grand aisle is on the left side of the store, with deli and prepared foods lining the left side wall and bakery in the back corner. Meat and seafood are on the rest of the back wall, with dairy and frozen on the right side. No pharmacy here, but floral is in the front-right corner. It looked like the prepared foods departments were up and ...

Before we continue north along the coast of New England, it's time for a quick return to Worcester County. Why? Well, after I posted stores in the area of eastern Worcester County (see this area ), I actually got the chance to go back to the Hopkinton and Milford areas very recently -- in late August of this year, which obviously is much more recently than most of my Worcester-area coverage from ca. 2018-2023. So now we're going to interrupt the usual flow to return to this region, then a quick swing back up towards Lowell before we return to the north shore, to the north of Boston. We'll be taking a look at a store in Hopkinton, about 15 miles southeast of Worcester and ten miles southwest of Framingham. Then The Market Report visits all of the grocers of Milford, a midsize city between Worcester and Providence. This area is actually a hotspot for grocery activity, as we'll see a couple new stores or recently-changed stores in one way or another. Come back tomorrow for...

Market 32 Opened: 2021 Owner:  Northeast Grocery Previous Tenants:  Price Chopper (late 1990s-2021) Cooperative:  none Location:  240 E Main St, Marlborough, MA Photographed:  March 26, 2025 It's time for a look at a Market 32! It's been a while since we've seen a store owned by Northeast Grocery, which runs Price Chopper, Market 32, Market Bistro, and Tops stores. This one was built in the 1990s as a Price Chopper, converting to Market 32 in 2021 after some renovation. It's a nice store, but definitely a far cry from the deluxe Market 32 stores . A programming note: this store is actually back in Middlesex County, about eight miles northwest of Framingham  (where today's other post is ). But I inconveniently visited this store less than a week after I finished posting the Framingham-area stores. We also recently saw the Hannaford here in Marlborough , the only other supermarket in town, which is slated to become a Shaw's and closed in September. So now we...