"spa" = 'neighborhood grocery store', aka 'convenience store'?

[Joel S. Berson]

If anyone knows how to separate "spa" = 'neighborhood grocery store'
from the mass of "spa" = 'watering place', I'd be interested.  It's
an eastern New England usage (says AHD in "More word histories and
mysteries", but without saying a word about date of origin).

Adding "neighborhood" or "local" or "corner" (for a phrase) still
comes up with a lot of tubs or watering spas.  Adding "grocery" (not
as a phrase) gives much with GBooks, but tedious, small print, and it
seems a high probability of disconnected occurrences and false
positives.  Even adding "convenience store" comes up with many located at spas!

The best (earliest) I can find is a 1954 reference to (I think) the
famous* Montrose Spa, 1646 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge,
Mass.  Although it's much to the west of Tokyo!

In Tokyo and points east, by Keyes Beech - 1954, Snippet view:  Page
216.  [GBooks]

"One of my best and most useful friends was Mitch Sabbag, who earned
enough money as a truck driver to buy a half interest in the Montrose
Spa, a small neighborhood grocery that prospered by staying open when
other, larger stores were ... "

Acts of the Legislature of the State of New Jersey, allegedly 1933,
page 1384, has a business named "Kaiser's Spa, Inc.", but that is
hardly unambiguous.  [Snippet]

* See Henry Louis Gates, as written about by Charles Ogletree.  I
also learned of the famous town of Ballston Spa.

Joel

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