World Renowned Grocer Stew Leonard’s Announces Site for Fifth Store

Store in Farmingdale, N.Y. Expected to Open in Early 2016

Norwalk, Conn. – February 10, 2015 – Farm fresh food grocer Stew Leonard’s today announced that Farmingdale, N.Y. will be home to its fifth store and first grocery store location on Long Island. The new grocery store will be located in Kimco Realty Corp.’s (NYSE: KIM) Airport Plaza shopping center, across from the successful Stew Leonard’s Wines of Farmingdale store.

The family-owned and operated store, nicknamed the “Disneyland of Dairy Stores” by The New York Times, was founded as a dairy store in 1969 in Norwalk, Conn. and has grown to include three other locations in Danbury and Newington, Conn. as well as in Yonkers, N.Y. The company has received worldwide acclaim for excellence in customer service, and was included for ten consecutive years on FORTUNE magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work for” list.

“We are thrilled to finally be building a Stew Leonard’s in Farmingdale,” said Stew Leonard, Jr., President and CEO of Stew Leonard’s. “This has been a dream of our family’s since 2002, when we first started exploring options for a new store on Long Island. We know we’ll be welcomed with open arms by all of our friends in Farmingdale and throughout Suffolk County.”

“Offering local produce and working with local farmers has been a priority for Stew Leonard’s for decades – a business model that Suffolk County embraces and supports,” said Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone. “The Farmingdale location will create hundreds of jobs and support our local agricultural industry which are both vital to the economic prosperity of Suffolk County and our region. This has been a long time coming and I wish them all the future success.”

“We are very pleased that Stew Leonard’s chose Kimco’s Airport Plaza shopping center for their first location on Long Island. We are focused on partnering with best-in-class tenants, and Stew Leonard’s is no exception – they are a highly-regarded, one-of-a-kind grocer that will be a wonderful addition to the shopping center,” said Josh Weinkranz, Kimco’s northeast regional president. Stew Leonard’s was represented by their exclusive broker Jeffrey L. Nable of Ripco Real Estate.

Long Island-based and family-owned J. Petrocelli Contracting will begin construction on the new store in early 2015 and the store will officially open in early 2016. Once opened, the 60,000 square foot store will provide up to 400 jobs, a significant portion of which will be fulltime, offering a full array of benefits. Unlike traditional grocery stores that sell an average of 30,000 – 60,000 items, each Stew Leonard’s store carries only 2,200 items, chosen specifically for their freshness, quality and value.

Recognized as “The World’s Largest Dairy Store” by Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, Stew Leonard’s is perhaps best known for its farm-fresh milk, which comes directly from 3,000 cows that live on a family-owned farm in Ellington, Conn. The store also offers a “from scratch” in-store bakery, cut-to-order butcher shop, and fresh seafood department, while sourcing many other products from local farms and suppliers, including farms, vineyards, and other vendors on Long Island and throughout the State of New York. Most notable is an in-house kitchen, where throughout the day a 50-person culinary team prepares a variety of hot foods for their buffet bar, as well as refrigerated meals to go. Preparing these foods daily, in the store, rather than at an offsite commissary, guarantees customers the highest quality and freshest foods possible.

About Stew Leonard’s
Stew Leonard’s, a family-owned and operated fresh food store founded in 1969, has four stores in Norwalk, Danbury, and Newington, Conn. and Yonkers, N.Y. with a fifth store planned in Farmingdale, N.Y. Stew’s earned its nickname, the “Disneyland of Dairy Stores” because of its country-fair atmosphere, with costumed characters and animated entertainment throughout the store that keep children entertained while parents shop. Stew Leonard’s legion of loyal shoppers is largely due to the stores’ passionate approach to customer service: “Rule #1 — The Customer is Always Right”; Rule #2 – If the Customer is Ever Wrong, Re-Read Rule #1.” This principle is so essential to the foundation of the company that it is etched in a three-ton granite rock at each store’s entrance. The company’s culture is built around an acronym for S.T.E.W.: Satisfy the customer; Teamwork gets it done; Excellence makes it better; WOW makes it fun. For more information, visit Stew Leonard’s website at www.stewleonards.com.

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