"Brockton has been our home for 20 years, so we know this community well and wanted to bring something different to the city." Payal Patel said that in the September 21 announcement on Franchising.com for the Bubbakoo's Burritos she and Deep Patel now own and run at 735 Belmont Street. It's the chain's first location in Massachusetts.
Down the street, the old Stop & Shop at 683 Belmont reopened in September as Food Basket International. The company's original store is in Lowell. At 662, a storefront that sat dark for most of a decade is now a Papa John's. At 651, Chipotle has city approval to build in Shaw's Westside Plaza.
Three of those four addresses are open now. Between them, the 600 and 700 blocks of Belmont Street, which is Route 123, are where several food errands now start and finish. Until recently, some of those errands sent shoppers to another part of the city or as far as Lowell.
Four addresses, one stretch
| Address | What's there now | Status as of mid-October 2026 | What was there before |
|---|---|---|---|
| 651 Belmont St. | Chipotle Mexican Grill, in Shaw's Westside Plaza at Belmont and West streets | Site plan approved January 6, 2026. Not yet listed as open | New construction proposed in the plaza |
| 662 Belmont St. | Papa John's | Opened spring 2026 | 7-Eleven, which closed in 2017 |
| 683 Belmont St. | Food Basket International | Soft opening in September, grand opening October 2, 2026 | Stop & Shop, then a Stop & Shop online-order fulfillment center |
| 735 Belmont St. | Bubbakoo's Burritos | Grand opening announced September 21, 2026 | Not reported |
The grocery store is the anchor, and it's also the one with the longest backstory.
683 Belmont: the store people used to drive to Lowell for
The Stop & Shop at this address ran for about 25 years. In January 2020, The Enterprise reported that the company planned to close it on March 28 of that year and would not renew the lease, because the store wasn't meeting financial expectations. The pandemic changed the timing. By May 2020 the grocery had closed to shoppers, and the building reopened that Friday as a Stop & Shop online-order fulfillment center, which was expected to stay open for the foreseeable future, according to a May 2020 report. So for a while after 2020, the building that used to be the neighborhood supermarket was a warehouse for delivery orders. The Metro South Chamber of Commerce describes the space Food Basket took over as previously vacant.
Food Basket International planned a soft opening for Saturday, September 12, according to The Enterprise's preview, and held its grand opening on October 2. Mayor Moises Rodrigues, State Representative Bridget Plouffe, and representatives from Senator Michael D. Brady's office presented citations at the ribbon cutting.
The store's stock is what links it to the rest of this stretch. The Chamber lists the following:
- International groceries representing South Asian, Middle Eastern, African, Caribbean, and Latin American cuisines
- Fresh produce and a seafood department
- A full-service halal butcher shop
- A fast-casual kitchen serving prepared halal meals
MassLive reported that some Brockton-area shoppers had been driving to the Lowell store for specific spices and fish. The paper also identified team member Alauddin Chowdhury as a co-owner. The Chamber says the same thing more broadly: the store gives Brockton residents who used to leave the city for certain international foods, spices, and seafood a place to buy them closer to home. "We try to bring food from different parts of the world," Chowdhury told The Enterprise, as quoted in the Chamber's write-up.
The hours also suit an errand stretch. The store's website lists Brockton hours of 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday and on weekends. On Fridays it opens at 7 a.m. and closes at 10 p.m. A store open until 10 every night makes 683 Belmont a stop for any hour, not only a weekend trip.
735 Belmont: a chain's first Massachusetts counter
The franchise announcement calls 735 Belmont the brand's debut in Massachusetts and part of a wider push into New England. CEO Chris Ives said the region is familiar territory for the company. The restaurant sits in what the announcement calls a high-visibility retail plaza.
The menu is Mexican fusion, built to order: burritos, bowls, tacos, and quesadillas, plus named items like the Papi Hibachi steak-and-shrimp burrito and the Nashville Hot Crispy Chicken Burrito. The Brockton store opened with the chain's fall menu, which adds Fried Cauliflower as a starter or a protein, and Apple Pie Egg Rolls. The chain also advertised 15 percent off catering for fall gatherings when the store opened. Chains change promotions often, so check with the restaurant before planning around that one.
With 683 and 735 now open, the grocery trip and the takeout order can happen in the same few minutes on the same road. Two more addresses round out the stretch.
662 and 651: filling in across the street
The Papa John's at 662 Belmont is the least surprising of the four. The Enterprise's write-up said as much, noting that in a city where bar pizza reigns king, the new shop adds a traditional chain option. The address is the notable part. That storefront had been empty since 2017, when a 7-Eleven closed after nearly 20 years. The Enterprise reported the opening on May 19, 2026, so 662 had been dark for most of a decade, a few numbers down from the grocery building.
At 651, the change hasn't happened yet. On January 6, 2026, the Brockton Planning Board unanimously approved the site plan for a new Chipotle in Shaw's Westside Plaza, at the corner of Belmont and West streets, The Enterprise reported. The board's minutes show the approval came with one added condition: an internal crosswalk in the plaza. In September 2025, the paper described the project as a new building and a new location, not a move.
No opening date has been announced. As of this writing, Chipotle's own Brockton locator lists one store in the city, at Westgate Mall, 500 Westgate Drive. For now, a Chipotle run from the west side still means crossing town. Once 651 opens, it would be the fourth new food address on this short stretch, and the only one sharing a plaza with an existing supermarket.
How the stretch fits together, in street-number order
Here's how the stretch lines up for a Saturday or a weeknight after work, going by street number:
- 651 Belmont, Shaw's Westside Plaza. The existing supermarket, with Chipotle approved to join it and an internal crosswalk required as part of that approval.
- 662 Belmont, Papa John's. Pizza for the night, in the old 7-Eleven space.
- 683 Belmont, Food Basket International. Halal meats, fresh fish, international pantry staples, and a hot prepared-meal counter, open until 10 p.m. every night.
- 735 Belmont, Bubbakoo's Burritos. Build-your-own burritos and bowls, run by owners who have lived in Brockton for two decades.
The street numbers span less than a hundred. Two of the four spots offer something the city didn't have a year ago, and a third is waiting on construction. A year ago, buying halal-butchered meat and fish, picking up a prepared meal, and grabbing a burrito for the kids might have taken three trips, one of them to Lowell.
At Alex Rocher, we keep track of corridors like this because they show what a part of town is turning into. If you live on Brockton's west side and want to know how new openings like Food Basket International and Bubbakoo's are affecting what nearby homes are worth, ask us for an instant home valuation. We'll show you what's selling near Belmont Street right now.
