North Shore Farms to open stores in Queens, Westchester

North Shore Farms is expanding off the Island.

The Glen Cove-based specialty grocer plans to expand beyond its six stores on Long Island with two new locations, spokesman George Tsiatis said.

A North Shore Farms store will open in a former Waldbaum’s location in the Whitestone section of Queens this year and another will open in a former A&P space in Westchester County’s Mamaroneck in early 2019, he said.

Last week, North Shore Farms announced its plan to open a seventh Long Island store in a former Waldbaum’s location in Hauppauge this spring.

North Shore Farms’ new stores will open in spots formerly occupied by supermarkets that closed when their parent company, Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2015.

North Shore Farms has stores in Commack, Great Neck, Glen Cove, Mineola, North Belmore and Port Washington.

Tsiatis said the company will “seek other communities where we can open a store that matches the shopping experience that our shoppers have come to expect and that serve our mission, while not overextending the company.”

The Westchester expansion was a matter of opportunity, Tsiatis said.

“Our only hesitation was that it was in Westchester,” he said.

Founded in 2003, North Shore Farms describes itself as a grocery store, gourmet food store and farmer’s market. Its stores’ sections include delis, prepared foods, meat and poultry, produce, seafood, dairy and groceries, as well as large areas for cheese and olives.

The chain is in a growing segment called “fresh-format stores,” which are smaller than typical grocery stores and focus on perishables and center-store assortments that differ from those of traditional retailers, according to Willard Bishop, a Long Grove, Ill.-based grocery industry research firm.

“One of the bigger trends in the retail food industry is to build smaller stores that are highly focused on the needs of the local neighborhood,” said Jon Hauptman, senior director at Willard Bishop. “They’re being built to serve really the needs of a targeted group of people.”

Between 2015 and 2016, the number of traditional grocery stores declined 3.5 percent to 40,498, but the number of fresh-format stores increased 7.5 percent to 1,547, according to a Willard Bishop report.

North Shore Farms plans to open its 23,000-square-foot Queens store this year, to be leased from the Feil Organization.

Its Westchester store will open in a space in Mamaroneck Centre that North Shore Farms is renovating and leasing from Brixmor Property Group. A CVS drugstore opened in half of the approximately 25,000-square-foot building in 2017; North Shore Farms will take the rest of the space, Brixmor spokeswoman Kristen Moore said.

Brixmor also will add 13,000 additional square feet of space for small shops in Mamaroneck Centre.