According to the company, the recalled product come with lot numbers 1280W & 1293W, and is packed in white and green plastic pouch. The product was distributed to four supermarket chains in six states: Demoulas Marketbasket in Massachusetts and New Hampshire; Giant Eagle in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, and Ohio.

Trans-Ocean said the potential for contamination was reported to it by the manufacturer of the product and subsequently, distribution of the product were suspended.

Listeria monocytogenes is a life threatening bacteria, and consuming food contaminated with the bacteria can result in a disease called listeriosis, a potentially fatal disease in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. The symptoms of listeriosis include, fever, muscle aches, and sometimes gastrointestinal symptoms such as nausea or diarrhea.

Healthy individuals may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea. Listeria infection can cause miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women.

Listeria has a mortality rate of greater than 25 percent and has been found in uncooked meats, uncooked vegetables, raw fruits, unpasteurized milk, foods made from unpasteurized milk, and processed foods.

The recent spread of listeriosis, probably from Cantaloupes, has impacted more than 100 people over a wide geographic area in the U.S. The outbreak has taken the lives of at least 25 people until date.

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.

Market Basket Supermarkets is giving away $25,000 worth of gas each winner will get a $500 American Express gas card

Read more: http://www.patriotledger.com/archive/x1125485953/Market-Basket-to-come-to-Brockton#ixzz1P7Gj4Y2Y

opening on June 6th, 2011. We are very excited. This new store will be about 108,000 sq. ft. in size, have a Market’s Kitchen, In-Store Bakery, Market’s Cafe, and more. More information is coming soon, stay tuned.

The Union Leader on MyDemoulas.com

Independently run site: Michael Devaney’s website
about the Demoulas/Market Basket chain includes
store locations, hours, phone numbers and sales
circulars.

By PAUL FEELY
New Hampshire Union Leader

MANCHESTER— There are fan sites on the Internet for singers and stars, but a city man has developed a site devoted to a supermarket chain — and it’s generating hits in the millions. A website that expounds the virtues of the Demoulas / Market Basket chain of stores, www. mydemoulas.com, created by Manchester resident Michael Devaney, has gained new Internet visitors each month since he created it six months ago, and, as of this past Thursday, had recorded 4,082,419 hits since August, according to usage statistics posted online in real time.

The fact that Devaney set up a fan site for a supermarket is unique enough, but the story behind it is even quirkier. “My fiancee, Joslyn, really wanted to go to Demoulas in Concord one night,” said Devaney, a web designer by trade. “We live in Manchester, so we didn’t want to head out if they were close to closing. I tried to find out their hours, anywhere, on the Internet, and couldn’t find them posted. So we tried calling, and couldn’t reach anyone. So we put off the trip until the next day, but I started thinking that the whole thing was crazy; it should be easier than that to find the information. So I decided to design a site on my own: He purchased the domain name “mydemoulas.com” and set about creating the site. Devaney has a lot of information posted, from store locations, hours and phone numbers, to weekly sales circulars, to news about the company in general, including information on the newly renovated Market Basket that opened this week in Salem on the site of one of the original Demoulas markets. But he is careful to stress that his site is in no way connected to the Market Basket chain of stores in any official way. “I don’t use their logo, or copy any of their images,” said Devaney. “I created my own logo for the site, and I have someone who sends along the circulars to me to post there. But we are careful not to copy anything from them.”
Efforts to reach someone at Market Basket headquarters in Tewksbury. Mass., for comment on the site were unsuccessful. The reaction to the site has been more than Devaney ever hoped for. “It’s funny how many people I hear from, all thanking me for doing this because they just couldn’t get information on the stores,” said Devaney. “I have a debit card that’s in the ‘mydemoulas’ name, and the other day a guy commented on it at a store when he saw it. He said he used my site all the time. Things like that are awe-some to hear. We’ve had over a million unique visitors already.” 

By JOSEPH G. COTE
Staff Writer

HUDSON – Swordfish steaks are on sale for $5.99 a pound this week at Market Basket, and you can get five Mama Rosie’s Spinach Ravioli for $5 or save 70 cents on

The Nashua Telegraph Features MyDemoulas.com

Chavrine Crumbled Goat Cheese.

None of that information is available on Market Basket’s website, nor is a list of the regional grocery chain’s stores or store hours, because Market Basket doesn’t run a website.

Instead, shoppers have a relatively new option, MyDemoulas.com, owned and operated by Manchester resident Michael Devaney.

“I’ve been a fan for a long time,” Devaney said. “Growing up in Massachusetts, going to DeMoulas was an every weekend thing.”

Last summer, Devaney’s fiance wanted to go to the Market Basket store in Concord but he wanted to check the store hours before making the drive.

“We didn’t want to take the chance of driving all the way down there and having it closed and all that,” Devaney said. “There’s no hours anywhere online.”

He learned that while the chain operates 19 stores in New Hampshire, including in Nashua, Hudson and Milford, and is building three more in Manchester, Hooksett and Londonderry, it does not have a website or a Web presence to speak of.

The Londonderry store will replace an old one in that town.

Devaney launched the site less than six months ago and had nearly 2,000 visitors that month. But visits are up, way up, to the tune of nearly tripling each month.

The site has now been visited about 4.4 million times by 1.4 unique visitors, Devaney said.

“There was an opportunity there, and mostly I’m an entrepreneur,” said the independent website developer. “It’s a really big opportunity. It’s a major super market chain in New England.”

The site is fairly straightforward with a blog dominating the front page and a row of buttons at the top for a store locator, the weekly flier, coupons, a forum, a history section and a menu for the stores’ cafes.

A number of the visitors also participate on the site. Devaney said he gets hundreds of e-mails and comments left on the site itself.

“It is being widely used. It’s pretty incredible.”

The site is called MyDemoulas.com after the founder of the company, Athansios “Arthur” Demoulas , and the original store, DeMoulas Market that opened in Lowell, Mass., in 1917, according to the history section of Devaney’s site.

Market Basket officials did not return phone calls seeking comment. The manager of the Hudson store on Lowell Road, Martin Maguire, didn’t know about Devaney’s site but thought it was a good idea.

“I think it’s great that someone did that,” Maguire said.

Maguire said he’s never known why Market Basket doesn’t have a website but suspects it is so that money can go into other parts of the business.

“They try to keep operating costs down so it can be put into the pricing,” he said. “We try to keep our prices as low as possible.”

That’s fine by Devaney, who is now making a tidy sum with the site and puts in next to no work on it.

Not only is the advertising hands-off, even the weekly flier and coupons are posted by visitors to the site. All he does is run contests and raffles to help drive surfers to the site, Devaney said.

“It’s basically a turn-key business,” he said.

Devaney said he hopes to sell the site to Market Basket but so far hasn’t gotten a response to a number of inquiries, though it’s nice that it brings in some money in the interim.

“In the end it would be really great if they were actively online in the 21st century,” he said.

Joseph G. Cote can be reached at 594-6415 or jcote@nashuatelegraph.com.

Source: http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/news/905847-196/man-creates-own-market-basket-site.html

The regional Market Basket supermarket chain attracts strong brand loyalty.

Do you really care where you buy your milk and eggs?

New Hampshire’s Michael Devaney does. So much so that he’s started a Web site to share the latest deals from Market Basket, a Boston-area regional chain with 62 stores. He’s also chronicling the rich history of the family-owned business from the days when it was a small mom-and-pop grocery that let customers buy on credit during the Great Depression to its distinction of operating New England’s Largest Supermarket today.

Here’s breaking news this week from the Market Basket deli:

Purdue Oven Stuffer Roasting Chicken — 89 cents/lb

Boneless Chuck Steak — $2.99/lb

Extra Lean Corned Beef — $4.99/lb

Big deal, you say?  The remarkable thing about Devaney’s supermarket fan site — which provides directions and hours for all locations — is that it is now the primary source of information on the Internet for Market Basket shoppers. The company itself does not have a Web site!

Devaney is playing the nostalgia card by naming his site after the original family store name.  MyDemoulas.com has almost 500 fans on Facebook, complete with a photo gallery of area stores. He also spreads the word with MyDemoulas bumperstickers:

Why one of Boston’s most powerful supermarket chains doesn’t have an official Web presence is baffling — and we’ll leave that question for the psychics.

What is most remarkable is how one brand enthusiast has taken his passion for food shopping and loyalty to one store and turned it into a community.

Already, this little side project has generated high-profile media attention from the two biggest newspapers in New Hampshire, the Nashua Telegraph and the Manchester Union-Leader. And he claims to have attracted more than 4 million hits since August, with more than one million unique visitors.

How long will it be before Market Basket executives take notice?” – Full Story: http://blog.pongr.com/2011/01/21/supermarket-addict/