More supermarkets opening on Long Island in 2026 amid shifting landscape

Supermarket competition is growing fiercer on Long Island as the variety of retailers expands, with at least half a dozen stores set to open this year.

Specialty and discount grocers are seeing the most growth these days as consumers seek unique items or savings amid soaring grocery prices, which are 25% higher than five years ago. But the overall number of grocery stores is shrinking, led by the decline in the number of traditional supermarkets, retail experts said.

The Long Island grocery landscape will continue to evolve in 2026 with more retail changes, including Arizona-based fresh, natural and organic foods grocer Sprouts Farmers Market making its Long Island debut in Centereach on Jan. 30; German discounter Aldi opening a store in Great Neck by the end of April; and Melville-based Italian specialty grocer Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace opening two stores, in Greenvale and Levittown, this year. 

Discounters and specialty grocery stores are benefiting the most from the consumer shift in grocery shopping, while traditional grocers are being left in an "unsustainable middle ground," Jon Hauptman, founder of Price Dimensions, a Chicago-based pricing adviser for supermarket chains, wrote in an email.

"Consumers can find interesting items in specialty grocers and greatly stretch their weekly shopping budgets in discount grocers. Traditional grocers are often just a lukewarm alternative," he said.

Long Island’s high median incomes and high cost of living are drawing more grocery players and shifting the shopping landscape in the region, retail experts said.

In 2024, Nassau County’s median household income was $143,144 and its poverty rate was 5.6%, while in Suffolk County, the median household income was $126,863 and the poverty rate was 6.5%, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Nationwide, the median household income was $81,604 and the poverty rate was 12.10%.

"I think we have more options than a lot of places," Judy O'Brien, of Smithtown, said Tuesday after shopping at the 1-year-old Aldi in East Northport. She and other shoppers said they regularly buy groceries at multiple stores, and they take more than price into consideration.

Another shopper, Barbara Gravina, of Elwood, said, she likes having choices. "I do shop the discount stores like Aldi but I also appreciate Stop & Shop because they have a better variety. The prices aren't as good but sometimes the quality is better." 

Specialty grocery stores that have opened on Long Island in the past year include Giunta’s Meat Farms, which opened its 10th Long Island store, in Middle Island, in November, and Uncle Giuseppe’s, which opened its 12th store, in Bohemia, in November.

Wegmans, which opene d its first store on the Island , in Lake Grove, last February, is a full-service grocer that is sometimes perceived as a specialty store because of its high focus on its perishable and service departments, said  Jeff Metzger, founder and publisher emeritus of Food Trade News, a Columbia, Maryland-base d publication.

Uncle Giuseppe’s is one of the largest specialty grocers based on Long Island, where the chain has eight of its 12 stores. The grocer is growing in part because it sets itself apart from other grocers, even specialty retailers, said CEO Carl DelPrete.

“Uncle Giuseppe’s is not a supermarket. We’re really a food store that offers much more than a conventional grocery in that we have our in-store prepared foods, our own bakery … deli items that are made fresh every day,” he said. 

LI sees steep decline in grocery stores

While the number of grocery stores is declining nationwide, the drop has been steeper on Long Island.

Between 2014 and 2024, the number of grocery stores on Long Island fell 26% to 746 and the number in the New York City metro area fell 25% to 7,202, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates. But the number nationwide fell only 4%, to 58,659.

Supermarket closings by King Kullen, Stop & Shop, Pathmark, Fairway Market, Waldbaum's and other traditional grocers — some chains no longer exist after bankruptcy filings — over the past decade have created real estate openings for incoming stores.

But some nontraditional stores have fizzled out, too.

Amazon Fresh, which allows shoppers to pay digitally without going through traditional checkout lanes, closed its Plainview store in September, about a month shy of its first anniversary.

Seattle-based Amazon closed several Amazon Fresh stores over the country and all 14 in the United Kingdom in 2025, leaving 57 in the United States.

Another factor in the decline in the number of supermarkets nationwide is that more types of retailers, including drugstores and convenience stores, are selling a wider variety of groceries, Metzger said. 

Also, ecommerce is a factor in the New York City area losing a larger share of its supermarkets, said Scott Moses, a Roslyn native and a partner at Solomon Partners, a financial services company in Manhattan where he heads the grocery, pharmacy and restaurants investment banking group.

Online grocery sales are more profitable in densely populated areas because it is easier and quicker for grocers to make deliveries to people living within close proximity of each other, he said.

"An online grocer with higher profitability, particularly enormous global grocers, can offer lower online grocery prices, which leads to higher online grocery sales," Moses said, adding that the largest online grocers in the United States are Walmart, Amazon/Whole Foods, Costco and Target.