Economy Grocery Stores

Billerica Center branch of Economy Grocery Stores, the Boston grocery chain that was renamed Stop & Shop in 1946, in the one-story block of the Billerica Center Shops at Boston Road and Andover Road. It took over the store of the E. E. Gray Co., which closed after Gray's bankruptcy in 1930: Paul J. LeLacheur, the Gray store's meat cutter in 1931, was meat manager of Economy Grocery Stores here in 1941 and 1942, with O. Paul Franz managing the grocery department. The town paid bills to "Economy Grocery Stores" from 1933, the store advertised in the Howe High School yearbooks of 1939 and 1940 as the "Economy Store, Billerica Ctr.", and its sign appears on the block in a photograph of about 1940. Frank Cohen bought the block in 1946, and from 1947 the Billerica Market occupied this part of it.