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Is your Stop & Shop store closing? Here’s the list

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5 months ago

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Is your Stop & Shop store closing? Here’s the list

PROVIDENCE – Stop & Shop announced Friday that it will close its store in Johnston as well as the Eastside Marketplace that it operates in Providence.

The stores are among 32 underperforming stores the chain will close throughout the Northeast in a move to make the brand more competitive.

  • The chain is closing eight stores in Massachusetts, including stores in Worcester, Raynham, Shrewsbury and Brockton, but none near the Rhode Island border.
  • Five stores in the western half of Connecticut
  • Seven locations in New York State
  • 10 in New Jersey.

The Quincy, Massachusetts, chain will still have 25 stores in Rhode Island and more than 350 across the five-state area.

When will the Stop & Shop stores close

The closings will be on or before Nov. 2.

The company said in its announcement that all workers will be offered jobs in other stores.

A company spokeswoman deferred comment on how the August 2021 opening of a Market Basket in Johnston affected the decision to close the Johnston Stop & Shop.

Why is Stop & Shop closing stores?

Stop & Shop acknowledged that part of the chain’s difficulties was not being competitive on prices and pledged to do better.

“Stop & Shop is focused on growing through large, multi-year price investments and a stronger customer value proposition, both in-store and online,” company president Gordon Reid said in a statement accompanying the announcement. “This means we’ll be focused on delivering lower everyday prices, as well as even more savings for our customers through strong promotions.”

Since 2018, the chain has remodeled 190 stores, and the remodeled stores have performed better than those that were not revamped, Reid said.

Customers at the Johnston store not surprised it’s closing

Inside the Johnston store around 1 p.m. Friday, most of the aisles were devoid of shoppers, but outside, in view of a 3-year-old Market Basket on a hill across town, several longtime Stop & Shop customers said they were not surprised Johnston was one of the locations closing.

“I saw the writing on the wall a good year ago,” said Linda Gillooly, of Johnston, who’s been a customer for 38 years. “Every time I’d leave this store, I’d say it’s only a matter of time.”

“I wasn’t surprised,” said Tony Guadagno, also of Johnston, a three-decade customer. “Disappointed, I guess. In the last year, it almost looked like they were closing.”

Guadagno will miss one convenience of shopping there. “It’s not overly crowded. I like that.”

Gillooly agreed. “The store’s always dead,” she said. “They’re not doing anything creative to attract new business.” And some things the store does she finds downright annoying, such as no longer having butchers on-site, and having the store patrolled by “Marty” the robot.

“It’s too bad. I actually like it better than up on the hill there,” said Jeff Kulas, of Scituate, as he gave a nod toward the Market Basket store. “If you use the Stop & Shop card you actually get a better deal.”

How are workers reacting?

“They’re disappointed,” said Tim Melia, president of Local 328 of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

That’s especially true of those from Eastside Marketplace, whose closing caught the union by surprise.

“A lot of people who work in that store, that’s the only store they’ve ever worked in,” said Melia.

While acknowledging that the cuts could have been deeper in Rhode Island, Melia said that workers who change locations because of the closings will miss relationships they’ve built with customers, and some workers, especially part-timers, may not be able to switch to a new location because of transportation issues.

“It’s turning people’s lives upside down right now,” Melia said.

Price check: How do Stop & Shop’s prices compare with local competitors’? We decided to investigate.

Dig Deeper: More about the grocery chain’s decision to close stores

Stop & Shop’s corporate parent, the Dutch-based Ahold Delhaize, said at an investor meeting last week that it will close underperforming stores, without saying how many or which ones.

“Stop & Stop has done a thorough evaluation and is focused on assuring a stable and thriving future,” the Dutch company’s chief executive for the United States, JJ Fleeman, said during an online presentation dated May 23. That includes “optimizing the portfolio to focus on core markets where it can win.”

Fleeman said that since 2018, Stop & Shop has remodeled 190 stores, with the refreshed stores outperforming stores that were not updated.

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