Market Basket arrives in Rhode Island

Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont. No non-grocery posts.
jamcool
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Re: Market Basket arrives in Rhode Island

Post by jamcool »

Bashas’ in AZ has some of the traits of Market Basket-still family owned, traditional stores (but with pharmacies supplied by United Drugs), buys from local suppliers (especially meat and dairy), mostly regional/national brands with Topco products as their private label. Except they went through a bankruptcy and have gone through a few rounds of expansion/contraction
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Re: Market Basket arrives in Rhode Island

Post by klkla »

jamcool wrote: May 23rd, 2021, 6:51 pm Bashas’ in AZ has some of the traits of Market Basket-still family owned, traditional stores (but with pharmacies supplied by United Drugs), buys from local suppliers (especially meat and dairy), mostly regional/national brands with Topco products as their private label. Except they went through a bankruptcy and have gone through a few rounds of expansion/contraction
I would respectfully disagree. They are nothing alike.

Market Basket has a consistent reputation in their trade area and virtually every store they open blows away the competition. They're very aggressive on pricing and operate very high volume stores.

Basha's is inconsistent and has very few high volume stores. They operate mainly three different brands: 1) Basha's - a boring mainstream brand with a handful of high volume units, 2) Food City - a Latino brand consisting mostly of older stores that didn't succeed under the Basha's name, and 3) AJ's Fine Foods - A small upscale brand with fairly small stores in the 15-20,000 sq. ft. range. They also have some stores that operate on Indian Reservations and Eddie’s Country Store which appears to be similar to Jensen's smaller stores operating in the San Bernardino Mountains of California.

Other than being family owned I don't see much similarity.
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Re: Market Basket arrives in Rhode Island

Post by storewanderer »

Market Basket runs super high volume stores (higher volume than average in the Northeast, which is already a market with a lot of high volume stores due to the density) and another odd quirk is their store hours are pretty limited; they close very early, like 8:30 PM or something, on a regular basis.

What was weird is when I went to NH for the first time I'd never even heard of Market Basket. The place was basically next to the hotel and I wanted to go take a look but it was already closed when I got there (it was pretty late). I did go to some other store that was open, I think a Stop & Shop, which I thought was terrible despite being a large modern store (funny they ultimately left NH). So I walked over to Market Basket the next morning around 10 AM, and when I approached the parking lot it looked something like a mall during the holidays with tons of people going in and out with carts, so I knew I was in for something. After I walked down a couple center store aisles and saw their mix and pricing it was very obvious why they had so many shoppers.
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Re: Market Basket arrives in Rhode Island

Post by Romr123 »

We were headed to Cape Cod last weekend, so often stop at the Bourne MB (last one I know of before the Cape). It's always a treat on a Saturday afternoon--the store's incredibly busy, but every da@@ checkstand is in use with a bagger clerk helping--you're in and out in a trice. Last Saturday, the manager (big bald-headed guy in a jacket---stereotypical supermarket manager) was on the PA doing "bluelight specials"...in essence. They had a pallet full of Cape Cod beach towels, regular price 7.99 for .99 (not too bad a value for 7.99...we bought a couple "just cause"). Much merriment over the PA about that. About 10 minutes later, he had 25 hanging baskets--those he gave away---didn't see but suspect they were a little rough. The weather'd been bad for the holiday weekend so they were doubtless blowing out some stuff. This store has a coffee bar in front.
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