Discount grocer Lidl's 22nd store on LI opening this month
Discount grocer Lidl will open its 22nd store on Long Island, in Garden City Park, on June 15. Credit: Lidl
Discount grocer Lidl’s 22nd store on Long Island will open soon in a space that a Waldbaum’s supermarket occupied for nearly 40 years before closing in a bankruptcy.
The new supermarket will open at 2475 Jericho Tpke. in Garden City Park on June 15, Lidl said in a statement Monday.
“I'm happy to see Lidl opening its doors in Garden City Park, the first store in the town of North Hempstead,” North Hempstead Councilman Dennis Walsh was quoted as saying in the Lidl statement. “This location was vacant for a while. It is nice to see a much-needed store like this open in District 3.”
Lidl has spent more than $6 million on the Garden City Park store, which will employ more than 45 people, the chain said.
The German retailer entered the Long Island market after it purchased 27 stores in New York and New Jersey, including all 24 on Long Island, from Bethpage-based Best Market in January 2019.
Lidl is known as a "limited assortment" grocer, with a smaller store size than traditional supermarkets. Credit: Lidl
The Waldbaum’s opened in Garden City Park in 1976. The store was among 51 grocery stores on Long Island that closed after their parent company, Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2015.
The Garden City Park space was later occupied by other grocers. Garden City Food opened there in 2016. That was replaced by Super Fresh Food World, which closed in 2018.
Long Island changes
Lidl is categorized as a limited-assortment grocer, whose stores tend to be smaller than traditional supermarkets, and it sells a high percentage of its own private-label brands.
Lidl operates about 11,550 stores in 32 countries, including more than 150 U.S. stores across nine East Coast states.
The chain, whose U.S. headquarters are in Arlington, Virginia, has said it plans to have 50 stores on Long Island by 2029.
Lidl's supermarket takeover on Long Island included the retailer permanently closing several Best Market stores. In addition, Lidl opened three new stores in spaces that had been vacant — in Plainview, Center Moriches and Riverhead.
Two more Lidl stores are expected to open in the next year on Long Island.
The former Best Market in Commack, which was closed at 84 Jericho Tpke. in the Mayfair Shopping Center in February 2021, is expected to reopen this fall as a 30,000-square-foot Lidl, but in a different space — in Stein Mart’s former location in the shopping center.
Lidl also plans to open a store at 450 Commack Road in Deer Park, the grocer’s first new-construction store on Long Island, in early 2023.
That store will be 35,827 square feet, said Patrick Maslinski, spokesman for the town of Babylon.
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.
