Aldi to open 13th Long Island grocery store this month

Fast-growing discount grocer Aldi will open its 13th Long Island store this month and has three more local stores in the works for 2024.

Benefiting from cost-conscious shoppers pursuing bargains, Aldi plans to open 120 stores in the United States this year.

The German grocer's next new store on Long Island will open July 27 in an approximately 20,000-square-foot space at Crossroads Plaza, 75 Route 25A, in Rocky Point.

“Our stores are designed to make grocery shopping smarter, faster and easier … We’re excited to open our first Aldi store in Rocky Point and introduce local customers to a new, more affordable way of shopping,” Chris Daniels, a regional vice president for Aldi, said in a statement Thursday.

The grocer’s Rocky Point store is taking over a spot that had been occupied by a Mattress Firm, which relocated last year to another  space in the shopping center, said Carol Ann Modell, property manager for the plaza, which is owned by Miller Family Limited Partnership IV – Rocky Point.

The mattress store’s former unit was demolished, and a new space was built for Aldi, she said.

Helped by lower prices

Aldi has 2,282 stores in 38 U.S. states, including 97 that opened last year.  Of the 120 new stores scheduled for 2023, 53 have already opened, Daniels said.

Aldi, which entered the Long Island market in 2011 with a store in Bay Shore, opened two Long Island stores last year, in Bohemia and Carle Place, and one in Hempstead this past May.

The grocer plans to open three more Long Island stores in 2024 — in East Northport, Medford and Central Islip, Daniels said.

The Medford store will be at 2799 Route 112, in the Medford Crossings shopping center. The East Northport store is planned for 4000 Jericho Tpke. in the Huntington Square shopping center, he said.

Regarding the planned Central Islip store, Manhasset-based PX4 Development will redevelop the former Central Islip Psychiatric Center property for retail businesses and housing for seniors, veterans with disabilities and people with autism that would total 150,000 square feet, including a 20,259-square-foot Aldi.

The Central Islip site, which previously housed a New York Institute of Technology campus, is at the southwest corner of Carleton Avenue and South Research Place. Site work on the development will start in the third quarter of this year, with the Aldi projected to open in 2024, said Michael F. Puntillo, president of PX4.

Aldi is benefiting from consumers changing their shopping habits amid inflation worries, retail experts said.

Supply chain issues contributed to high inflation,  sending grocery prices in the United States soaring last year to 11.4%, the highest annual increase since 1974, said Scott Hoyt, senior director of consumer economics at Moody’s Analytics in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

The inflation rate for grocery prices was 4.7% last month, which was an improvement from the 12.2% in June 2022, but it was still elevated, he said.

Discount grocers such as Aldi, Lidl and Trader Joe’s are benefiting. Those retailers are categorized as limited-assortment grocers, which are discounters that carry a high percentage of their own private-label brands instead of name brands, and their stores are smaller than traditional grocery stores.

“As a result, shoppers are shifting where they shop,"said Rob Weisberg, executive vice president of Incentives & Loyalty at Inmar Intelligence, a retail industry analytics company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

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.