The Market Report

Crown Meat Market Opened: 2021 Owner:  Graciene Macedo Previous Tenants:  Crown Bakery Cooperative:  none Location:  133 Gold Star Blvd, Indian Lake, Worcester, MA Photographed: May 7, 2021 For years, this building near the southern tip of Indian Lake in Worcester was the Crown Bakery. That closed in 2020 (although the recipes were picked up by Bean Counter Bakery , which has locations just under a mile south of here on Grove Street and another on Highland Street in Main Middle). In 2021, the Crown Meat Market , a Brazilian butcher shop, opened up in the roughly 4500 square foot space. A few aisles of grocery items are at the front, with butcher and deli counters at the back. Here's a cool view from above. Up next, we're headed to Greendale just to the north to see a few former supermarkets and then the two big stores at the northern Worcester border!

Original Grocery Tenant:  Iandoli Super Market Address: 117 Gold Star Blvd, Indian Lake, Worcester, MA Opened:  ca. 1960s Closed:  ca. 1980s Later Tenants:  Austin Liquors Photographed:  October 19, 2020 I mentioned yesterday that we're kind of doing this in reverse order: in the 1960s, Iandoli Supermarkets opened here in this roughly 20,000 square foot space. A Mammoth Mart department store was next door. Around the 1970s, Iandoli moved into the Mammoth space and rebranded to Food Village. That later became a Shaw's, which eventually moved a bit south . Following Iandoli's departure from this space, it became an Austin Liquors store, which was a liquor store chain owned by the Iandolis also. Although a few Austin Liquors remain around the city, it doesn't look like they're related to the Iandolis anymore, and they might not even be related to each other. That's all for this strip mall, but tomorrow we'll check out a tiny independent grocer just up the bl

Price Rite Marketplace Opened: between 2000 and 2007 Owner:  corporate Previous Tenants:  Iandoli Super Market > Food Village > Shaw's Cooperative:  Wakefern Food Location:  117 Gold Star Blvd, Indian Lake, Worcester, MA Photographed:  November 4, 2018 and October 11, 2019 Even though we're seeing today's store after yesterday's Shaw's , we're actually going in reverse chronological order: this building previously housed a Shaw's until that location opened in the mid-00s. Originally constructed as a department store back in the 1960s, it joined a neighboring Iandoli supermarket that we'll be taking a closer look at tomorrow. I'm not entirely sure on the history of this exact location, but at some point (probably around the 1970s) the supermarket moved into the Mammoth Mart space. The store changed from Iandoli to Food Village, which Iandoli owned, in the mid-1970s. I assume it became a Shaw's in 1987-88, although city directories list Foo

Shaw's Opened: between 2000 and 2009 Previous Tenants:  none Location:  14 W Boylston St, Indian Lake, Worcester, MA Photographed:  November 4, 2018; December 7, 2018; September 7, 2020; March 13, 2021; October 2, 2021; October 8, 2021; October 19, 2021; and April 4, 2022 What's the highest-volume supermarket in Worcester? Well, of course we don't have access to sales numbers but we do have access to Placer.ai , which estimates that this store gets monthly visits of around 136,700 visits -- the highest-traffic grocery store in Worcester. ( Big Y is the second-highest, with around 92,000 visits per month; Market Basket just outside of the city blows them all away with over 215,000 visits.) But at 68,000 square feet, this is a rather large and clearly high-volume supermarket. We're gonna tour this store a few times. My first set of pictures is from back in 2018, when the store had this pre-Supervalu decor package; then we'll see a few updates over the years, then a