Waldbaum's Southampton Closes with 95 Percent Off Sale

With barren shelves and empty aisles, most of the Southampton Waldbaum’s store looked post-apocalyptic, a bit like something out of AMC’s The Walking Dead, during the last hours of its final day of clearance on Wednesday. The store, which has been open at 167 Jagger Lane since 1970 (previously under the A&P name), closed out its last bits of inventory for 90 and then 95 percent off before relinquishing the keys to Stop & Shop, its new owner.

Last minute deal-hunters piled the grocery chain’s remaining items into carts, grabbing stacks of 15 cent ping pong balls, baby formula, fiber supplements, Mio water enhancer, Sterno canned heat and cooking fuel, Goya canned squid, nasal spray and anything else that filled the last end caps at the front of the store. Curiously, boxes of General Mills monster cereals Boo-Berry and Franken-Berry lingered despite this being Halloween season.

Two large purchases that would have amounted to $204.33 and $501.59 went out the door for $12.17 and $40.38 respectively, including tax.

Representatives from Shop-Rite, who occupied a table with employment applications inside, said the new supermarket would open on Friday, October 17. The two women said most of the current Waldbaum’s employees would be returning to work for Stop & Shop at the Southampton location.

Sharon Taylor and Tiffanie Murphy—two Waldbaum’s clerks who helped bag, confirmed that they and most of their coworkers would be back to work there next week.

Waldbaum’s announced in July that it would be closing after Stop & Shop Supermarket Company acquired 25 A&P-owned stores in the New York Metropolitain area for $146 million.

Stop & Shop announced Monday that it will acquire the Waldbaum’s supermarkets in Southampton and East Hampton villages, just a day after the company that owns Waldbaum’s filed for bankruptcy.

The acquisitions are part of an agreement between Stop & Shop Supermarket Company LLC and the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, or A&P, in which Stop & Shop acquired 25 stores in the greater New York City area for $146 million. The buy includes the Waldbaum’s in Southampton, Riverhead and East Hampton, and the three stores have been steadily selling off inventory for increasingly low prices in recent weeks.