Stop & Shop Buying 3 King Kullen Stores

The Stop & Shop Supermarket Company LLC has entered in a definitive agreement with King Kullen to purchase the latter chain’s three supermarkets on New York’s Staten Island.

Stop &Shop, which currently operates two stores the island, a New York City borough, will reopen two of the stores, at 1441 Richmond Avenue and 4343 Amboy Road stores, after the sale is completed. The third location, at 3251 Richmond Avenue, will close in early January 2012. Stop & Shop said it would provide further details on store conversions once the sale goes through.

“These new locations will offer more island customers the best combination of quality, convenience and value they have come to expect from Stop & Shop,” said said Don Sussman, division president of Stop & Shop’s NY Metro Division in Fairfield, Conn.

More than 300 associates currently work at the three locations. Stop & Shop will interview every employee at the store slated to close and offer employment opportunities to qualified candidates.

“Selling our three Staten Island stores to Stop & Shop enables us to concentrate resources elsewhere within the company,” explained Thomas Cullen, VP of Bethpage, N.Y.-based King Kullen, which operates more than 40 stores in the New York metropolitan area. “We [will work] closely with Stop & Shop during the transition process.”

An Ahold USA company, Quincy, Mass.-based Stop & Shop employs nearly 62,000 associates and operates almost 400 stores in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, New York, and New Jersey.