After faithfully serving Beacon Hill for more than 30 years, Savenor’s Market will close its 160 Charles St. location following their last day in business this Saturday, June 22.
The Charles Street store opened to serve the business’s faithful customers not long after a fire burnt down the original store on Kirkland Street in Cambridge in 1992, said Savenor’s spokesperson, Alisha Lumea, as it took several years to fully rehabilitate the Cambridge.
Savenor’s Market soon-to-be-shuttered location at 160 Charles St.
A third-generation family business, Savenor’s got its start in 1939 as a small Cambridge grocery store before growing into a gourmet butcher and produce shop to meet the area’s demands, with offerings including prime meats, imported patés, wild game, fresh seafood, and specialty foods. The original location was once frequented by the Rockefellers, Kennedys, and Schlesingers, as well as by the nation’s first celebrity chef, Julia Child, a longtime customer who sourced all of the meats from the store for her popular ‘French Chef’ series throughout its 10-season run on PBS. Jack Savenor, the store’s founder, even made several guest appearances on the series as Child’s butcher and was frequently mentioned on air by Child.
The closure of the Charles Street store comes in response to a changing marketplace following the pandemic as more Savenor’s customers became accustomed to shopping online.
“We’re streamlining and focusing…in response to how people want to shop now,” she said. “A lot of people only go to the store periodically to check out what’s new and do their day-to-day shopping online.”
Lumea added: “We’ll still have the Cambridge store open, and we’re working on creating a more robust online shopping experience to meet customers where they are.”
The main footprint of the Cambridge store is about three times as large as the Charles Street store, added Lumea, and that doesn’t include Cambridge’s back-of-store operations, such as the cutting rooms, corporate offices, or the wholesale operation.
Meanwhile, Savenor’s expresses its thanks to the Beacon Hill community for warmly welcoming them to the neighborhood and for continually and faithfully patronizing the business for more than 30 years, said Lumea. She added that Savenor’s has greatly enjoyed operating on Beacon Hill, and the business hope that customers from the neighborhood will continue shopping with them online or at their Cambridge location.
In May, Savenor’s was acquired by Wulf’s Fish, a wholesale and online seafood company which got its start as a Brookline fish market that dates back to 1926, The Boston Globe reported.
Savenor’s Market is located at 92 Kirkland St. in Cambridge, or visit them online at savenorsmarket.com.