Power Outages Delay Some Store Openings

NEW YORK — Widespread power outages in the Northeast kept some supermarkets closed Tuesday, while others gradually reopened throughout the day in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Karen Meleta, a spokeswoman for Keasbey, N.J.-based Wakefern, told SN Tuesday that many ShopRite stores throughout the region were without electricity, as was the company's Edison, N.J., distribution center, which was running on generator power.

"We're slowly coming back online," she said. "Today our focus is on reovery, getting [refrigerated trucks] to where they are needed, and getting supplies to the areas that need them."

She said several Wakefern facilities were running with "skeleton crews."

"The safety of our workers is our main concern," Meleta said.

Tracy Pawelski, a Carlisle, Pa.-based spokeswoman for Ahold USA, told SN that as of Tuesday afternoon "under 20" Stop & Shop stores in New York and New Jersey were closed due to damage, flooding or road closures as a result of the powerful storm, which caused what some estimated as tens of billions of dollars in damages.

All Ahold-owned stores in the Giant-Carlisle, Giant-Landover and Stop & Shop-New England divisions were open on Tuesday, and all Ahold warehouses were open.

Ahold's Peapod e-grocery division will resume deliveries in New England and the Washington area starting Wednesday, she said, and intends to resume deliveries in the Philadelphia area on Thursday.

"Peapod is uncertain about when deliveries will resume in the New York Metro area because of the widespread power outages and road closures," Pawelski told SN.

Fairway Markets here said Tuesday that five of its stores remained closed Tuesday morning, but all but one — in Red Hook, Brooklyn — had reopened by Tuesday afternoon. Fairway said it was providing shuttle bus service for workers to get to its stores while mass transit was down and many bridges, tunnels and roads were closed.

Read more: Retailers Prepare for Hurricane Sandy

New York-based online grocer FreshDirect canceled deliveries through Wednesday, and Gristedes, which had reopened several stores in New York City Tuesday, posted signs in its windows noting that it was not offering delivery.

Whole Foods Market reopened three of its seven New York City supermarkets as of Tuesday afternoon. Several of its stores were in locations that had lost power.

D'Agostino's said Wednesday that some stores had reopened but that five stores in lower Manhattan were still closed due to power outages.

Rochester, N.Y.-based Wegmans Food Markets, which operates in several Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states, said all of its stores had reopened on Tuesday, although it cautioned that some services and product availability would be limited.

Photo gallery: Mixed Bag: Sandy in Supermarkets

Bethpage, N.Y.-based King Kullen Supermarkets also said several of its stores, mostly located on Long Island, were without power Tuesday morning.

In Connecticut, Big Y had reopened all of its stores on Tuesday, as did Stew Leonard’s.

In an interview with Bloomberg News, Mark Cooper, head of emergency management for Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart Stores, said the company had 300 stores in the path of the storm and that 100 were still closed Tuesday morning, with more and more expected to come online throughout the day.