By CHARIS WALLACE
cwallace@capecodonline.com
October 11, 2011
NEW BEDFORD — Happy shoppers buzz around aisles that stretch off into the distance in a bright and pristine store.
The inviting aroma of toasted almond coffee beckons from a quaint café in the corner.
Smiling cashiers and baggers work amid the soft beeping of items being scanned at more than a dozen checkout lines on a weekday afternoon.
Grocery utopia? No, actually, it’s New Bedford — Market Basket in New Bedford, to be precise.
Market Basket supermarkets are in demand, with a legion of devoted shoppers who make longer trips to reach them — and who follow news about the chain on an Internet fan site. And next spring, Market Basket will open its first Cape location, in Bourne.
So what’s the big deal?
Two shoppers entering the New Bedford store on Tuesday, Paul and Joyce Kohout of Marion, have ready opinions on the topic.
“They have all the brand names,” Joyce Kohout says.
The retired couple say they bypass supermarkets closer to home because Market Basket has the right mix of selection, price and atmosphere. And though there’s a Price-Rite down the street from Market Basket that’s cheap, “it doesn’t have a good selection,” Paul Kohout adds.
Market Basket was founded in 1917 as Demoulas, a small, mom-and-pop market in Lowell. Today, the chain has 64 stores scattered throughout New England.
There is even a forum on mydemoulas.com — a fan site not affiliated with the company — where zealous consumers plead for the store to come to their towns.
Until the Bourne location opens next year, the Market Basket in New Bedford is the closest one to Cape Cod.
One devout shopper who identifies herself only as “Mrs. Vancour” travels the 15 miles from Rochester to New Bedford just to shop there.
“I love Market Basket,” Vancour says as she loads her trunk with groceries. “The prices are great and they have a lot of checkout lines. I never have to wait long when it’s busy — and it’s always busy.” The 100,000-square-foot supermarket has 27 checkout lines.
Vancour says that her 30 minute New Bedford grocery excursions are worth it, and she was delighted to learn that Market Basket will be opening near the Sagamore Bridge, since Bourne and New Bedford are virtually the same distance from Rochester.
Inside the New Bedford store, a group of city firefighters are shopping. “We come here a lot because of the quality and variety of food,” Lt. Kurt Houghton says. Firefighters Kevin Cornier, Kevin Sweet and David Charpentier agree, saying that Market Basket is a quick and convenient stop for them to grab a bite during work.
Nearby, an assistant manager, John Silva, is working. His nametag says that he’s worked for Market Basket for eight years. Silva was originally at the Raynham store and was asked to join the New Bedford team when the location opened last October.
“They treat you very well here and the people are nice — my co-workers and the customers,” Silva says.
The name tags worn by each employee are accompanied by the number of years they have been Market Basket employees — something other local grocery store chains don’t do. Market Basket’s manager of operations, David McLean, says the company came up with the idea last year: “It shows longevity and lifelong employment which, in turn, shows people that Market Basket is an attractive place to work,” he says.
Store managers have an average of 30 years’ experience, says McLean, who works at the corporate office in Tewksbury and has 35 years with the company.
In Bourne, planning and construction is proceeding as planned. “We cannot contain our excitement,” McLean says. The new store being built in Sagamore, where the Cape Cod Factory Outlet Mall used to be, is scheduled to open before Memorial Day, as long as this winter’s weather doesn’t interfere with construction.
Market Basket will be the first grocery store in Bourne since November 2008, when the Grand Union off MacArthur Boulevard closed.
In addition to Market Basket’s current 64 locations, another six are in varying stages of development. McLean says the company is scouting out other potential locations throughout New England.
The chain’s stores vary in size and staff. Its Chelsea store is 135,000 square feet and employs 800 people. New Bedford’s is 100,000 square feet. The Bourne Market Basket is expected to be “60,000 square feet, which is still rather large, and is predicted to generate 400 to 500 new jobs, based on the success of recent store openings,” McLean says. He says the store’s staffing is expected to grow during the busy summer months.
By comparison, the Stop & Shop in Hyannis is 55,000 square feet, while the Shaw’s in Orleans was expanded four years ago to 63,759 square feet.
While Market Basket does not have its own corporate website, a fan site — mydemoulas.com — has cropped up, with a wealth of information — everything from new store openings and the company’s history to weekly circulars, coupons and stores’ hours of operation. Website developer Michael Devaney of Manchester, N.H., who created the site, has no affiliation with Market Basket.
“It’s kind of a funny story,” Devaney says. “My fiancee and I had moved to New Hampshire and we needed to go to the grocery store one night and were unsure what time they were open until. My fiancee said, ‘Go online and Google it.’”
After searching the Internet for at least an hour with no luck, Devaney’s fiancee suggested that he should create a website about the chain.
Devaney says he was interested in Web design, so he did it “for fun, out of boredom and it was easy to do.”
After he launched the site in September 2010, he shared the site with his family and friends and then, to his surprise, it became extremely popular. The site is the first link that is listed when you enter “Market Basket” as a Google search, and it reached the 30,000-user mark after only eight months of being online. “That is a high number of users during a short period of time for a website that I didn’t even invest one dollar into,” Devaney says
Last month, 51,900 new users visited the page — and some expect Devaney to act on their concerns.
He said he received a phone call one night from a Lynn woman complaining that the price of her cigarettes went up. He says he’s received complaints, compliments, suggestions, demands from consumers everywhere via email and phone calls.
He explains that they need to call their local Market Basket.
