Westhampton Beach's Biggest Grocery Store Is Changing Hands Again. Where Does the Village Shop This Winter?

The Lidl at 70 Sunset Avenue closes at the end of October. It is the largest grocery store in the village of Westhampton Beach, at 29,118 square feet. Cary Staller is president of Staller Associates Realty, the firm representing the landlord. He told Newsday that a full-service supermarket will take over the space. A confidentiality agreement keeps him from naming the tenant. Mayor Ralph Urban told 27east he had not been able to get Lidl's corporate office to confirm the closing.

That gives the village a winter between grocers, with no announced opening date for whatever comes next. It also highlights a pattern. The village's food shopping has spread out across a set of small, specialized shops. The one large store for weekly basics, the building on Sunset Avenue, is the part that keeps changing hands.

Four Grocers, One Building

Newsday and 27east together give a clear history of the site:

1. Waldbaum's ran the store for many years. It closed in September 2015, after parent company A&P filed for bankruptcy protection that July.
2. Best Market bought the store in bankruptcy court for $4 million and opened there in 2016.
3. Lidl bought 27 Best Market stores, including every one on Long Island. 27east dates the acquisition to 2018, and Newsday says the purchase was finalized in January 2019. The Westhampton Beach Best Market closed in November 2020 and reopened as a Lidl the following May.
4. An unnamed full-service supermarket is next, according to the landlord's representative.

Lidl's lease ran out in March, and Staller said the grocer got an extension to late October. Best Market lasted roughly four years in the building and Lidl about five and a half. With this closing, the store will have lost a grocer three times since 2015. Each turnover has also meant a gap of months between one operator leaving and the next one opening.

Why the Big Room Keeps Turning Over

Staller explained Lidl's exit in terms of fit.

"I think they felt the market really wasn't right for them. It was sort of this upscale vacation market and it didn't fit in with their prototype."

That prototype is a limited-assortment store, smaller than a traditional supermarket, where about 80% of the products are Lidl's own brands. Staller's view is that the format "wasn't really what the community wanted." Mayor Urban saw value in it. He told 27east that many residents enjoy Lidl's produce, its bakery and its prices.

The mayor also named the problem every operator at this address has faced. Any supermarket in the village has to work through a busy summer and a quiet offseason. He made the same point to Newsday: slow business outside the summer is hard on retailers. A store with nearly 30,000 square feet of shelves has to stay stocked in February too, and it needs enough customers then to cover the cost. That has been the problem for Waldbaum's, Best Market and Lidl alike. The next operator will face it as well.

The Small-Format Village Was Already Here

While the big store changed hands, the smaller food shops kept growing. The latest addition is the clearest example of that trend.

Citarella opened at 141 Montauk Highway on Thursday, April 30, 2026, on the former site of The Claddagh Restaurant and Tap Room. At 5,000 square feet, the store is about one-sixth the size of the Lidl on Sunset Avenue. Owner Joe Gurrera told Newsday he hadn't seriously considered Westhampton Beach until the pandemic. "It used to be a summer community," he said. After COVID, he saw people spending more of the year in Westhampton and nearby Quogue, Remsenburg and Eastport.

That is a direct contrast with how Staller described the market. In the same year, a discount chain is leaving because it sees an upscale vacation market, while a specialty grocer has opened because it sees people living here for more of the year. Both are betting on who is in the village in winter, and they reached opposite answers about which kind of store those customers will support.

Newsday's Citarella coverage also listed the local shops that already supplied much of the same food. These were Schmidt's Country Market in Quogue and Justin's Chop Shop, Mill Road Cheese Shop, Fruit King and Sidney's Taylor Made Cuisine in Westhampton Beach, plus Lighthouse Seafood in Hampton Bays. The article also pointed out that Citarella brought things the area hadn't had, including its range of breads, imported pasta and three types of radicchio. On opening day, Newsday spoke with Katina Mayer of Quogue. She called Citarella "a one-stop shop, quicker and with more options," and said she still shops at Schmidt's and Justin's.

Specialty food, prepared food, cheese, seafood, meat and produce are all available within a few miles. Inexpensive weekly staples are the one category that will have no large store in the village from November until the new tenant opens.

A Weekly Shop, Mapped for November

The table shows each store's own posted hours where it lists them. None of these pages states that its hours apply in the offseason, so check before a special trip.

A few notes on the table:

• Citarella's hours have already changed once. Newsday reported opening-week hours of 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. The store's current listing shows a shorter day.
• Mill Road Cheese Shop's posted fall hours run 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sundays and mostly 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on other open days. The shop's About page shows a different Tuesday schedule, so call ahead.
• The Hampton Bays Stop & Shop is the nearest large conventional supermarket on this list. The chain's locator also lists stores at 167 Main Street in Southampton and 1615 Old Country Road in Riverhead.
• Wild by Nature also serves Hampton Bays with a grocery, bakery and deli.

This setup splits the shopping by distance. Fresh, prepared and specialty food stays local, on Main Street, Mill Road, Montauk Highway and Jessup Avenue. Paper goods, pantry staples and other bulk basics will mean a drive east to Hampton Bays until 70 Sunset Avenue reopens.

What 70 Sunset Avenue Still Has to Clear

The public record has no details about the replacement yet. The Village Planning Board's September 24 agenda included other applications, among them work at 61 Sunset Avenue, but nothing for number 70. The Board of Trustees' September 16 work session agenda didn't mention Lidl or the address either. As of early October, no news outlet has named the incoming tenant or reported an opening date.

The next operator will be taking on the problem the mayor described and the store's history shows. It needs a store large enough to justify nearly 30,000 square feet that can also get through a quiet offseason. And it opens with Citarella already in the village and a set of established local shops already covering specialty food. The first public sign of the replacement will probably be an application for 70 Sunset Avenue on a Village Planning Board agenda.

Stoebe & Co. handles property management and concierge service for second-home owners in Westhampton Beach, and that includes keeping track of local changes like this one. Get on the VIP list and we'll let you know when the new tenant at 70 Sunset Avenue is named and when it opens.