Restaurant owner Elmer Melendez stands inside the future home of Tacos Tequila Mexican Cocina, a Mexican restaurant he hopes to open on Main Street in Fitchburg before Cinco De Mayo. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)
There's a new bodega in downtown Fitchburg, stocked with a colorful array of hot chocolate and chips and beans that come special from Central America.
Owner Carmen Mejía de Guzmán and her husband moved to Fitchburg from Chelsea in the summer of 2019. They could afford to buy a house here — but there was one problem.
"I had to go to Chelsea to buy all the things we eat," she said in Spanish, "like the beans, cornmeal, cheese, cream. We were living well, but we missed our food."