Trader Joe's has confirmed it will open a new store in Massapequa inside the former Rite Aid space at 5125 Merrick Road, adding a ninth Long Island location to a chain that has been rapidly expanding across the region. The company has not said when the store will open, how many people it will employ, or why it picked this particular stretch of Merrick Road.
Trader Joe's spokeswoman Nakia Rohde confirmed the Massapequa plans but declined to provide more information about the location, including an opening date, according to Newsday. The grocer currently operates eight stores on Long Island, including one that opened in Miller Place in February 2026, the outlet reported.
Complicating the picture, Massapequa Plaza's leasing director, Robert Delavale, told the newspaper that a specialty grocer would likely open in a 12,000-square-foot space at the shopping center in the first quarter of 2027 — but he declined to name the retailer. A property flyer for the plaza, meanwhile, lists the former Rite Aid space at approximately 11,500 square feet and marks it as available. Newsday did not report an explanation tying Delavale's unnamed specialty grocer and timeline directly to the confirmed Trader Joe's plans, and the square-footage figures in the two sources do not match.
What the Miller Place Store Looked Like
If Massapequa's build-out follows a similar pattern to Trader Joe's most recent Long Island opening, shoppers can expect a modestly sized store. The Miller Place location, which opened February 12, 2026, as the chain's eighth store on Long Island, has a 9,200-square-foot sales floor inside a roughly 13,500-square-foot building, the report's companion Newsday piece on the Miller Place debut noted. That store hired more than 50 new employees and transferred additional workers from nearby locations to staff it.
Limited-assortment grocers like Trader Joe's typically run smaller stores with fewer items than traditional supermarkets, with the bulk of their shelves stocked with private-label products rather than national brands, per the same Newsday account. That format has helped fuel the chain's reputation among shoppers even as it keeps footprints relatively compact compared with full-size supermarkets.
A Bigger Long Island Buildout
The Massapequa store is only one piece of a larger regional push. Trader Joe's is also building a distribution hub on a 66-acre site in Islandia, at the former Computer Associates headquarters near the southwest corner of Motor Parkway and Bedford Avenue, the Newsday report states. The company paid $118.6 million for that property in August 2025, and the planned complex includes three buildings totaling 922,084 square feet.
Rohde told Newsday that Trader Joe's plans to open additional stores later in 2026 in New York, Illinois, Washington and California, part of a broader expansion that had already produced 21 new stores nationwide by the time of the report. Separately, Mass Market Retailers reported the chain expects to open 30 new stores in the coming months across 16 states, with additional New York locations slated for Camillus near Syracuse, Glenmont, and Staten Island.
Long Island Chatter Preceded the Confirmation
Rumors about a Massapequa Trader Joe's had been circulating locally before the company's confirmation. A post on Reddit's r/longisland asked whether reports of a store opening on Merrick Road across from Burns Park were valid, with one commenter saying they had seen Facebook posts about a possible new location but could not confirm whether it was true or approved. Other commenters in the thread raised concerns about parking and traffic at the rumored site, according to the posts on the r/longisland subreddit.
The Massapequa Plaza site has substantial vehicle traffic. A property flyer from Breslin Realty, the Garden City-based landlord, reports average traffic of 33,000 vehicles per day passing the plaza and lists Ace Hardware and Northwell Health GoHealth Urgent Care among its co-tenants. For now, Long Islanders eager for a ninth Trader Joe's will have to wait for the company itself to say more.
