Donelan’s grocery stores purchased by Patel family

Donelan’s in Lincoln. (Image: Google Maps)

(Editor’s note: This article was changed on June 13 to reflect corrections about the stores’ buyers.)

Lincoln’s only grocery store is about to change hands for the first time since it opened at Lincoln Station 45 years ago.

Brothers Joe and Jack Donelan are selling the grocery stores that bear their name to a family including father and son Gohal and Mohanbhai Patel that owns or has an interest in 10 convenience and food stores with various names in (eight in New Hampshire and on each in Maine and Massachusetts). The new owners have retained all of the existing staff at the Lincoln store and are taking over the beer and wine license as well.

The Donelans are selling all their stock interest in the four stores (the others are in Acton, Wayland, and Littleton) but will stay on for the time being as directors of the corporation to assist in the transition. 

“We may try to bring new food products, but the [Donelan’s] quality and customer service will remain the same,” Mohanbhai Patel told the Select Board during a June 7 public hearing on the liquor license transfer. “We’ll try something different than what they have right now… we’ll see what people like and don’t like, and keep what people like. We’re very excited to become part of the Lincoln community and we’ll try our best to make the community happy.”

The closest Patel store to Lincoln is in Pepperell, site of another former Donelan’s supermarket and now called Quality Market. The four recently purchased stores will retain the Donelan’s name. “The idea here is to continue with the tradition of Donelan’s as a family business,” said Alex Parra, attorney for the Patels.

The Select Board praised the Donelan brothers for their decades of support for town events and charities. “I want to thank them for their friendliness and being a key part of our community over the years,” board chair Jonathan Dwyer said.

“The people of Lincoln have been fabulous to us, and we’re going to miss Lincoln,” Jack Donelan said.

The first Donelan’s opened in Littleton in 1948 and the Lincoln location debuted in 1976 in the new mall. Joe and Jack Donelan bought the company from their father in 1985, and by the 1990s there were six stores in the chain (locations in Groton and Pepperell eventually closed). 

The Lincoln store had its ups and downs as well. It added 5,000 square feet in 2009 after taking over the space formerly occupied by the post office. But the store had to close for almost 16 months after the roof collapsed under heavy snow in February 2011, and at the time there was uncertainty whether it would reopen at all. The Donelans filed a legal complaint against the Rural Land Foundation, which owns the mall property, but the dispute was settled a year after the roof collapse.

In recent months there were rumors that one or more Donelan’s stores might close — rumors that were denied by corporate headquarters in Littleton when asked by the Lincoln Squirrel.

Before the mall was built, Lincoln residents bought groceries at the Community Store, which operated out of what was then a pink stucco building across the street in the building whose tenants now include Barrett Sotheby’s International Realty.