King Kullen to close Hewlett supermarket next month

A King Kullen supermarket in Hewlett will close next month after 45 years of operation, the grocery chain said Monday.

It will be the ninth store that King Kullen has closed since 2019, as the grocer, like other traditional supermarket chains, continues to shrink as more discount and specialty grocers expand in or enter the Long Island market.

King Kullen's Hewlett store, at 1765 Peninsula Blvd., will shut down on May 21, the grocer said in a statement.

“The decision to close was made after lease options expired and we were unable to reach favorable lease renewal terms. King Kullen is honored to have served the Hewlett community for 45 years,” Hauppauge-based King Kullen Grocery Co. said in the statement.

But the store's landlord, Elias Properties in Jericho, disputes King Kullen's statement about the lease negotiations, saying a renewal was never discussed for the Hewlett supermarket.

King Kullen "showed no interest in remaining at this location and we never discussed any terms," said Sean Elias, a principal with Elias Properties.

Asked about Elias' dispute of King Kullen's claim, the grocer declined to comment further.

The Hewlett location's employees will be offered the opportunity to transfer to other stores, the grocer said.

The closest King Kullen to the Hewlett store is 2 miles away, in Valley Stream.

King Kullen declined to disclose the number of employees who work at the Hewlett supermarket.

The 20,395-square-foot store is the anchor in the Hewlett shopping center, said Elias, adding that the landlord was talking to other retailers about possibly leasing the property.

He declined to say if any grocers were part of those discussions.

King Kullen Grocery Co. operates 29 stores on Long Island, including four Wild by Nature natural food stores.

The 25 King Kullens include supermarkets in Bethpage, Huntington Station, Lindenhurst, Massapequa Park and Bay Shore.

King Kullen is still the largest family-owned grocery chain on Long Island, but the grocer and other traditional supermarket chains have closed a number of stores over the past several years, including four Stop & Shops on Long Island in 2024 and The Fresh Grocer in Oakdale in January, as more discount and specialty grocers have expanded in or entered the Long Island market — and competition for grocery dollars grows more fierce.

Some nontraditional grocers also have called it quits, including upscale grocer The Fresh Market in Smithtown in 2025 and tech-heavy Amazon Fresh, whose remaining 57 stores, including two on Long Island, closed this year.

The shake-up is due to several factors, including Long Island likely having too many grocery stores, particularly as more types of retailers sell food, said Kevin Gallagher, vice president and co-publisher of Food Trade News, a publication in Columbia, Maryland.

“It seems like everyone that opens their front door is selling food, that could be the dollar stores, the convenience stores, the drugstores. So traditional supermarkets, everywhere they turn, it’s competition,” said Gallagher, a Massapequa Park native.

Among the eight stores the King Kullen Grocery Co. has shut down since 2019 was its King Kullen store in Middle Island, which closed in July after the company said it chose not to renew the lease, Newsday reported last year.

The grocer cited store underperformance as the reason for closing a King Kullen in Levittown in 2024, a Wild by Nature in West Islip in 2023 and three King Kullens — in Mount Sinai, Lake Ronkonkoma and North Babylon — in 2019.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.