Uncle Giuseppe’s to Take Over Stop & Shop Supermarket Space in Greenvale

Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace is seizing an opportunity that will be created by the exit of a Stop & Shop supermarket in Greenvale.

Uncle Giuseppe’s, a high-end supermarket chain specializing in Italian cuisine, will open a supermarket in a roughly 52,000-square-foot space at 130 Wheatley Plaza in Greenvale in the first quarter of 2026, Carl DelPrete, CEO of the 11-store chain in New York and New Jersey, said Monday. Stop & Shop will close its store at that location this year.

“Uncle Giuseppe’s is always looking for opportunities in interesting neighborhoods in certain areas with the right acreage and this opportunity presented itself. We are very excited for Greenvale,” DelPrete said.

The Stop & Shop store in Greenvale is one of four “underperforming” supermarkets on Long Island — and 32 stores in five states — that the Quincy, Massachusetts-based retailer said it would close by Nov. 2, Newsday reported last week.

Stop & Shop has been in the Greenvale space since 2015, moving in after the retailer took over nine former Waldbaum’s and Pathmark supermarkets on Long Island that it acquired from Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., or A&P, following the company’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.

Uncle Giuseppe signed a lease for the Greenvale store about two months ago, DelPrete said. Wheatley Plaza’s owner, Castagna Realty Co. Inc. in Manhasset, did not respond to Newsday’s request for comment.

Plans to go south

Uncle Giuseppe plans to open one to two new stores a year to reach 20 stores by 2029, DelPrete said.

“And we’re looking from Connecticut south to Pennsylvania right now,” he said.

The first Uncle Giuseppe’s store opened in East Meadow in 1998. The family-owned chain now has 11 stores, including one that opened in Yorktown Heights, Westchester County, in 2019; North Babylon in 2020; Morris Plains, New Jersey, in 2021; and Tinton Falls, New Jersey, in 2023.

Melville-based Uncle Giuseppe’s was looking for new retail spaces of about 50,000 square feet, DelPrete said. Those spaces are becoming harder to find, in part because landlords tend to want to subdivide those large spaces for multiple tenants, so Uncle Giuseppe’s is now looking at smaller spaces, about 40,000 square feet, he said.

All of the grocery stores Uncle Giuseppe opened were in locations where previous supermarkets had closed because they weren’t performing well enough, DelPrete said.

He said he wasn’t concerned about Uncle Giuseppe’s performance in Greenvale, saying Stop & Shop had struggled there because its store needed renovations.

“Uncle Giuseppe’s model is different and people seem to like it. So we’re not worried at all. We’re very excited about Greenvale,” he said.

The Uncle Giuseppe’s store in Greenvale will employ about 240 full- and part-time workers, DelPrete said. The store will be similar in size and layout to the Uncle Giuseppe’s store in Melville, which opened in 2017, he said.