Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace is seizing the opportunity created by the departure of Stop & Shop supermarket in Greenvale.
Uncle Giuseppe’s, a full-service grocer specializing in upscale Italian cuisine, plans to open a supermarket in about 52,000 square feet of space at 130 Wheatley Plaza in Greenvale in the first quarter of 2026, said Carl DelPrete, CEO of the Melville-based chain, which has 11 stores in New York and New Jersey. Stop & Shop plans to close a store at that location this year.
“Uncle Giuseppe’s has always been looking for a suitable sized store in a great area in a particular community and this opportunity came along by chance. We are very excited about Greenvale,” DelPrete said Monday.
The Stop & Shop Greenvale store is one of 32 “underperforming” supermarkets in five states, including four on Long Island, that Quincy, Massachusetts-based Stop & Shop Supermarket Company LLC has announced will close by Nov. 2. Newsday reported last week.
The Greenvale Stop & Shop is located in a former Pathmark supermarket space it has occupied since 2015. The space is one of 25 former Pathmark and Waldbaum supermarkets in the New York metropolitan area, including nine on Long Island, that Stop & Shop acquired from Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. (A&P) after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2015.
DelPrete said Uncle Giuseppe’s signed a lease for the Greenvale store about two months ago. Castagna Realty Inc. of Manhasset, the owner of Wheatley Plaza, did not respond to Newsday’s request for comment.
Plans to go south
Del Prete said Uncle Giuseppe’s plans to open one to two new stores each year and increase the number of supermarkets to 20 by 2029.
“And we’re looking now from Connecticut all the way south to Pennsylvania,” he said.
The first Uncle Giuseppe’s location opened in East Meadow in 1998. The family-owned chain now has 11 locations, including one opening in Yorktown Heights, Westchester County in 2019, North Babylon in 2020, Morris Plains, NJ in 2021 and Tinton Falls, NJ in 2023.
Uncle Giuseppe’s had been looking for about 50,000 square feet of new retail space, DelPrete said. But such space is becoming harder to find as landlords tend to want to subdivide such large spaces for multiple tenants, so Uncle Giuseppe’s is now looking at smaller spaces of about 40,000 square feet, DelPrete said.
All of the grocery stores Uncle Giuseppe’s has opened are in locations where previous supermarkets have closed due to poor business performance, DelPrete said.
He said he wasn’t worried about Uncle Giuseppe’s performance in Greenvale, saying Stop & Shop was struggling because its stores needed remodeling.
“Uncle Giuseppe’s is an unusual model that people like, so we’re not worried at all,” he said.
DelPrete said the Uncle Giuseppe’s in Greenvale will employ about 240 full- and part-time employees and will be similar in size and layout to the Uncle Giuseppe’s in Melville that opened in 2017.
