Giunta's Meat Farms buying King Kullen supermarket chain

Giunta's Meat Farms plans to acquire the King Kullen Grocery Co. Inc., an iconic, nearly century-old grocer that is the largest family-owned supermarket chain on Long Island.

It will be King Kullen's second attempt at a sale in seven years, after a deal to be acquired by Stop & Shop was called off in 2020.

An Oakdale-based grocer, Giunta's Meat Farms will acquire King Kullen's 24 supermarkets and its four Wild by Nature natural food stores, both companies announced Thursday.

Both Giunta's and King Kullen are Long Island-based, family-owned grocers that got their starts in Queens. Founded in 1930, Hauppauge-based King Kullen markets itself as "America's first supermarket," a claim confirmed by the Smithsonian Institution.

"As we looked toward the future, it was important to us to identify a local company that understood what makes King Kullen so special," Tracey Cullen, the recently appointed president and chief operating officer of King Kullen Grocery Co., said in a statement. "We found that in family-owned Giunta's Meat Farms. They appreciate our history and our people," said Cullen, a great-granddaughter of King Kullen's founder, Michael J. Cullen.

Founded in 1952, Giunta's has 10 stores on Long Island.

"King Kullen is more than a supermarket company," Joseph Giunta, co-owner of Giunta's Meat Farms, said in a statement. "It's America's first supermarket and a significant part of Long Island's history. We're honored to carry that legacy forward while delivering the strong everyday value that has long defined the Meat Farms experience."

Giunta's acquisition of King Kullen is expected to close in September, subject to "customary closing conditions," the companies said in the statement.

Until the deal closes, both companies will continue to operate independently and conduct business as usual, they said. No employees are expected to be laid off, they said.

The companies declined to answer several of Newsday's questions about the deal, including what the sale price is, why King Kullen is being sold, whether the King Kullen name will remain after the sale or what changes employees and customers should expect to see after the sale.

'This will breathe life back into King Kullen'

While working as a general manager at a Kroger Stores branch in Herrin, Illinois, in 1929, Michael J. Cullen proposed that Kroger build "five prototype self-service, cash-and-carry supermarkets 'monstrous in size,' " according to the "International Directory of Company Histories," a reference book published in 1996.

The president of Kroger never saw the proposal because a subordinate rejected it.

Cullen founded King Kullen on Jamaica Avenue in Queens in 1930.

While King Kullen remains the largest family-owned grocery chain on Long Island, the grocer and other traditional supermarket chains have closed dozens of stores in the region over the past several years, as more discounters and specialty grocers draw a growing share of food dollars.

King Kullen Grocery Co. has closed 14 stores since 2015, including a Hewlett store in May and a Middle Island store in July 2025.

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.

King Kullen was a trailblazer in the grocery industry, but it has become stagnant by not reinvesting in its operations, while a growing number of competitors enter the Long Island market, said Kevin Gallagher, vice president and co-publisher of Food Trade News, a Columbia, Maryland-based publication.

Giunta's is a strong operator, and its purchase of King Kullen is a good move, he said.

"This will breathe life back into King Kullen, if it even remains King Kullen," he said.

King Kullen has been slated for sale before.

In January 2019, Quincy, Massachusetts-based Stop & Shop, which is the largest grocer on Long Island, announced it planned to buy King Kullen, which at that point had 32 supermarkets and five Wild by Nature stores.

A year and half later, both retailers announced the deal was off, citing changes in the marketplace due to the COVID-19 pandemic as the reason.

But the president of a union that represents some King Kullen employees said a federal agency had been a roadblock.

"We understand the [Federal Trade Commission] has been a pretty sizable obstacle," Rob Newell, president of United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 1500 in Westbury, told Newsday in June 2020.

More than 2,160 unionized employees

King Kullen declined to disclose its number of employees Thursday. But two union locals provided some insight.

UFCW Local 1500 represents about 2,000 King Kullen and Wild by Nature employees working in produce, dairy, deli, frozen food, bakery, maintenance, bookkeeping and other departments, Newell said.

Also, UFCW Local 342 in Mineola represents 167 employees in the meat and seafood departments of King Kullen and Wild by Nature stores, said Keeley Lampo, communications director for the   local.

The union locals are prioritizing getting information from King Kullen and Giunta's about how the company sale will affect unionized employees, Newell and Lampo said.

"Local 342 would remain hopeful that the current bargaining agreement in place with King Kullen, which was just recently ratified, will remain with the new owners. … Our position is that our members remain undisrupted during this process," Lampo said.

Giunta's employees are also unionized.

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.