Kam Man Foods Opened: 2003 Owner: Wan Wu Previous Tenants: unknown Cooperative: none Location: 219 Quincy Ave, Quincy, MA Photographed: August 4, 2019 Quincy now has several large Asian supermarkets, but the first one was this Kam Man Foods, which opened in 2003. The store is nearly 85,000 square feet, and although there are some smaller shops inside that take up some space, it's still the largest Asian supermarket in New England. Kam Man also claims to be the oldest Chinese supermarket on the east coast, having been founded in New York City's Chinatown in 1972. Here's an archived article about the store from 2005. You enter through an indoor mall walkway -- in fact, I believe the space was previously a department store before becoming home to Kam Man -- and you can see the entrance to the supermarket below under the Market Entrance sign. As we'll see, Kam Man is closer to a Chinese American Walmart than a regular Asian supermarket. There's a lot here bey...
Roche Bros Opened: 2022 Owner: Il Yeon Kwon Previous Tenants: Roche Bros (late 1990s - 2022) Cooperative: none Location: 101 Falls Blvd, Quincy, MA Photographed: May 6, 2023 When southern Quincy's Roche Brothers closed in 2022, Korean supermarket chain H Mart was quick to jump on the space. The city's Asian American population is large and growing, and I'm sure H Mart couldn't pass up a 65,000 square foot store in a perfect location for them. This unusual sign, for drivers entering the complex, has the store names actually engraved in stone. When H Mart arrived, rather than re-engraving the stone, they simply placed a panel over the Roche Brothers name. H Mart gave the outside a fresh paint job, but inside, almost nothing had changed at the time of my visit in 2023. Since then, they've added a food court inside the supermarket. But the supermarket's interior otherwise looks an awful lot like Roche Brothers, which you can tour here if you haven't see...