King Kullen supermarket in Middle Island closing Thursday
The King Kullen store in Middle Island is closing Thursday after decades in business. Credit: Newsday/Steve Pfost
The King Kullen supermarket in Middle Island will close Thursday after 34 years in operation.
Newsday reported in April that the store would be closing but, at that point, no closing date had been made public.
But on Wednesday, King Kullen spokesman Lloyd Singer confirmed that the store will close at 3 p.m. Thursday.
"King Kullen made a business decision not to renew the lease at its Middle Island store. Employees have been reassigned or offered positions at other King Kullen locations. King Kullen is honored to have served the Middle Island community for the past 34 years," he said in an emailed statement Wednesday.
The Middle Island store occupies a 45,000-square-foot space at 1235 Middle Country Rd. in the Strathmore Commons Shopping Center.
King Kullen declined to disclose the number of employees working at the store.
But in April, a representative from United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 1500 in Westbury said the union represented 41 part-time and nine full-time employees working in the front-end, grocery, produce, dairy, frozen food, deli, bakery and receiving areas in the Middle Island store.
The union did not respond to a request for a comment Wednesday.
The shutdown of the King Kullen supermarket in Middle Island will leave the hamlet in Brookhaven Town with one small grocery store, Sunny Farms Marketplace, a 26,000-square-foot store that opened in May 2024 on Middle Country Road, about a mile from the Middle Island King Kullen.
Last year, another hamlet in Brookhaven, Coram, lost its only supermarket, a Stop & Shop that was 4.3 miles from the King Kullen in Middle Island.
The Middle Island shopping center occupied by King Kullen is managed by Island Associates Real Estate Inc. in Smithtown. The real estate company did not immediately respond to a Newsday inquiry Wednesday about whether another grocery store had been lined up to take over the space that King Kullen is vacating.
Brookhaven Town Councilman Michael Loguercio has been in discussions with King Kullen’s landlord about a replacement grocer, he told Newsday on Wednesday.
“He has a number of grocers that he’s speaking with and, hopefully, we’ll have an answer soon. I know the community really wants this. I want this. It’s something we need,” Loguercio said.
Headquartered in Hauppauge, King Kullen Grocery Co. operates 30 stores on Long Island, including 26 King Kullen supermarkets. The other four are Wild by Nature natural food stores.
Founded in Queens in 1930, King Kullen markets itself as “America’s first supermarket,” a claim confirmed by the Smithsonian Institution.
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 as more discount and specialty grocery competitors have expanded in or entered the Long Island market.
The Middle Island supermarket will be the eighth store that the King Kullen Grocery Co. has closed since 2019.
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.
