King Kullen, the Hauppauge-based chain that the Smithsonian Institution credits as America's first supermarket, has agreed to sell itself to Giunta's Meat Farms, the family grocer headquartered in Oakdale. The two companies announced the agreement on July 31 and expect the deal to close in September. The price was not disclosed. When it closes, the company that effectively invented the modern grocery store will change hands for the first time in its 96 years, and it will stay on Long Island when it does.

What is actually changing hands

The sale covers everything: all 24 King Kullen supermarkets across Nassau and Suffolk, plus the four Wild by Nature natural food markets in Hampton Bays, East Setauket, Huntington and Oceanside. Giunta's currently runs ten stores of its own on the Island, so the combined company will operate 38 supermarkets, all of them under one Long Island family's ownership.

Giunta's is not a private equity firm or a national chain shopping for a regional bolt-on, which is what makes this deal different from the one that almost happened before. It is a third-generation family business that started in Queens in 1952 and has spent the last quarter century building out its Meat Farms stores across Suffolk, built around in-house butchers and produce volume. King Kullen is the larger and older operation, Long Island's biggest family-owned grocery chain, run by descendants of its founder for nearly a century.

The company that invented the supermarket

The historical weight here is real, not marketing. Michael J. Cullen opened the first King Kullen on Jamaica Avenue in Queens on August 4, 1930, on a then-radical model: let customers walk the aisles and serve themselves, sell at low margins in high volume, and put the store where people could park. Nearly every grocery store on earth now works this way, which is why the Smithsonian recognizes King Kullen as the country's first supermarket. The company moved out to Long Island with its customers and has been a fixture of Nassau and Suffolk shopping centers ever since.

The sale that did not happen

Long Islanders have read a version of this story before. In January 2019, Stop & Shop's Dutch parent company agreed to acquire King Kullen, a deal that would have folded the Island's homegrown chain into a national banner. That sale dragged through more than a year of delays and was finally abandoned in 2020 as the pandemic upended the grocery business. King Kullen then spent six more years independent, which is the stretch that ends next month.

The difference between the two deals is the direction of travel. The Stop & Shop version would have moved decisions to a corporate parent overseas. This one moves the stores from one Long Island family to another, with headquarters staying on the Island either way.

What shoppers will notice, and when

Until the closing, the honest answer is nothing. Both companies continue to run independently until the transaction is complete, which they expect in September subject to the usual closing conditions. Your store, your pharmacy and your weekly circular do not change this month.

After the closing, two things are on the record and one is conspicuously not. On the record: the companies say all King Kullen and Wild by Nature employees are expected to remain with the business through the transition, which for a combined workforce across 28 acquired stores is the single biggest commitment in the announcement. Also on the record: the emphasis both sides put on shared family ownership and community roots, which is the language of a buyer planning continuity rather than consolidation.

Not on the record: the names. Neither company has said whether the King Kullen and Wild by Nature banners survive, or whether some stores eventually convert to the Meat Farms format. For a brand that has been on Long Island storefronts since the Depression, that is the question that will decide how different this feels in a year, and it is unanswered.

What it means for the reader

If you shop at any of the 28 stores changing hands, September is the date to watch, and the near-term stakes are low: same staff, same stores, new owner. The longer-term story is bigger than any one shopping trip. Long Island has been losing its independent, family-owned mid-sized chains for decades, absorbed one by one into national operators. This deal is the rarer outcome, the one where the buyer is from here too. Whether the name on the sign in 2027 says King Kullen, Meat Farms or something else, the decision will be made in Oakdale rather than in a boardroom overseas, and that is not how this story usually goes.