Plymouth's lost supermarkets and the shops that stayed

Shopping for food in Plymouth has changed a lot over the years, and a good chunk of that history is tied to the Italian families who set up shop here early on. Bill Fornaciari, an architect and lifelong resident, traces the city's grocery roots back to the Pavesi family, who arrived in 1892 with the specific intention of opening a store, unlike most Italians who came to work at the Plymouth Cordage Company. Their first shop sat in the Italian district of Water Street, near Union, Emerald, Water Cure and lower Leyden Street, until 1900, when the family moved to North Plymouth. In 1915, the residents of Water Street were evicted and relocated to make way for the Tercentenary celebrations, which cleared the land for what are now the parks. The Pavesi store eventually settled on Cherry Street, one of many Italian shops that filled North Plymouth and downtown in the early twentieth century.

Back then, the neighbourhood was dotted with family stores: Canevassi's on Court Street in North Plymouth for fruit and vegetables, Cappanaris' on Water Street for meat, and Victoria's Market on Standish Avenue, which sold preserves and bazaar items and is now Shiretown Glass. Fornaciari remembers his uncle Manny or aunt Margaret handing him a Coca-Cola there. Other names from the era include Benotti's, Broccoli's, Holmes on Sandwich Street, Perry's Market on Standish, Coopers or Barberi's at Jabez Corner, and Rebuttini's in the centre. The first chain, First National, opened downtown in the 1940s, and many of these family shops carried on into the 1960s; Rebuttini's lasted into the 1980s, and Perry's is still going.

What brought the small shops down was a combination of the Cordage Company closing, owners retiring and the arrival of larger chains with lower prices. By the late 1960s, the weekly shop had shifted: the new First National in the old Benny's Plaza became the first stop, in the era of Green Stamps and The Brady Bunch, followed by Tedeschi's on the Plymouth-Kingston line for Italian products like the Pastene line. IGA and A&P followed, and the opening of Independence Mall in Kingston in the 1980s saw many old institutions vanish as Stop & Shop, Shaw's, Star Market, Angelo's and eventually Walmart moved in.

For anyone who likes the old way of doing things, Perry's Market is the survivor. Sarah Perry opened it as a candy store in 1936, and the family has run it for all 71 years, now with her son Joe, his wife Norah and their nephew Rick Giuliotti at the helm. It's a butcher, a grocery and a beer, wine and liquor shop all in one, with homemade foods, ready-to-heat meals, deli sandwiches and a full range of fruit and vegetables. It opens at 8am seven days a week and closes at 9pm every day but Sunday, when it shuts at 6pm. For the rest of the fresh stuff, Fornaciari now splits his Saturday morning between Hearth Bakery for bread, Wood's for seafood, Bramhall's for coconut milk, PGS for special cheeses, Skippy's for gnocchi bread and the Plymouth Farmers Market in season, which runs on Thursdays at the Plymouth Public Library from 2.30pm to 6pm, rain or shine, with local produce, meats, cheeses and prepared foods.