That Liquor Store With the Great Signs Is Expanding to Assembly Row

Welcome back to AM Intel, a round-up of mini news bites to kick off the day.

Booze, Doughnuts, and Juice Head for Assembly Row

A few years back, watching the Sav-Mor Liquors letter board sign in Somerville go to battle with the McDonald’s sign across the street was one of life’s small pleasures for those passing by the Somerville location of the discount liquor store on McGrath Highway. Sav-Mor’s Somerville and Medford locations have both been having fun with their signs for years, changing them up for holidays or current events or just about anything. (“Now octopus free,” Sav-Mor Somerville once declared.)

The small local chain, which also includes Sav-Mor Spirits in Cambridge and Locke Liquors in Malden, dates back to 1961. It’s expanding within Somerville in the coming months, opening soon at the ever-growing Assembly Row development. A rep says that there has been some discussion of signage at the new location; while nothing has been finalized yet, it’s likely customers will “see something to continue the tradition in some way.”

Somerville’s Union Square Donuts will also expand to Assembly Row in the next few months. In addition to its namesake Union Square store, the local doughnut company also has a storefront in Brookline and kiosks at Time Out Market Boston and Boston Public Market.

And Jamaica Plain’s Juicygreens, a juice bar and cafe, is also on deck for Assembly Row expansion in the near future, along with its forthcoming location at Hub Hall, the West End food hall opening later this year.

In Other News...

• Boston Public Market plans to add a bar that will allow for onsite consumption at the market. Keeping with the market’s commitment to showcasing New England products, it’ll feature local booze.
• Food and art lovers may wish to head to Gallery 263 in Cambridge between September 30 and October 30 to view Cookout, a solo exhibition by Zach Horn that examines the artist’s spiritual relationship with food.
• Watertown’s beloved grocery store Russo’s, which recently announced a plan to close, has now set a date, and it’s very soon: September 18.
• Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue, a new book by James Beard Award-winning food writer Adrian Miller, highlights Boston’s unique place in the history of barbecue.
• Portland, Maine, is bidding farewell to its iconic B&M Baked Beans factory.
• Here’s how a Massachusetts court case that got Grendel’s Den its liquor license established a precedent that could be used to take down Texas’s abortion ban.

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