Aldi is continuing its rapid expansion on Long Island, where the discount grocer has 15 stores — including four that opened in the last two years — and plans to open four more by summer 2026.

Aldi recently signed a lease to open a grocery store at 38 Great Neck Road in The Gardens at Great Neck, a shopping center where a Best Market supermarket closed in 2021. The approximately 22,000-square-foot Aldi is tentatively scheduled to open in summer 2026, according to the Germany-based grocer, which has U.S. headquarters in Batavia, Illinois.

The Great Neck location is a needed coverage area for Aldi, said Chris Daniels, vice president of the grocer’s South Windsor Division.

"It’s a high-traffic area, close to our customers. But we also have a little bit of a gap in our market, where our next nearest store we’ve got some distance from," he said.

The closest Aldi to the Great Neck location is 6.4 miles away in Carle Place.

Aldi, which entered the Long Island market in 2011 with a store in Bay Shore, has been expanding quickly on the Island in the past several years. The six Long Island stores that have opened since 2022 are in Carle Place, Bohemia, Rocky Point and Hempstead, as well as Central Islip and East Northport stores that opened in December.

Newsday previously reported that three more Long Island stores will open this year. One will be in Medford, although the opening will be delayed a few months to late May or early June, and two others will open in Bethpage and Lake Ronkonkoma in late summer, Daniels said.

Aldi opened its first U.S. store in Iowa in 1976.

Now with more than 2,400 U.S. stores in 38 states, including nearly 120 stores that opened last year, Aldi is one of the fastest-growing grocers in the country.

Part of that is due to the retailer improving the appearance of its stores, making them more appealing to higher-income consumers, a growing number of whom are concerned about inflation, said Jon Hauptman, founder of Price Dimensions, a Chicago-based pricing strategy consulting firm for grocery stores.

"While Aldi was once a budget-oriented store frequented by bargain shoppers who couldn’t afford to shop elsewhere, Aldi now appeals to shoppers across all income levels with their outstanding offering of affordable and high-quality (and often unique) products," he said in an email.

Nationwide last year, among all stores that sold groceries, including warehouse clubs and convenience stores, discounter Walmart was the largest grocer, with 20.9% of the market share, while Aldi ranked eighth, with 3% of the market share, according to Numerator, a Chicago-based market research firm.

On Long Island, traditional supermarket chain Stop & Shop ranked first, though it is losing some market share to competitors.

Stop & Shop had 18.2% of the market share as of March 2024, down from 20.08% in 2021, according to a June report from Food Trade News, a Columbia, Maryland-based publication.

Aldi made the Long Island list for the first time in 2023, and ranked 19th last year, with 0.90% of the market share.

In February, Aldi said it planned to open a record 225 U.S. stores this year as part of its five-year growth strategy, announced in March 2024, to invest more than $9 billion to add 800 new U.S. stores by the end of 2028.

Aldi’s expansion plan includes opening completely new stores and converting some Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket stores it bought last year, with about 220 of those stores becoming Aldi through 2027.

In March 2024, Aldi acquired Southeastern Grocers and its approximately 400 Winn-Dixie stores and Harveys Supermarkets in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, which will "support Aldi expansion in a key region," the company said.

Last month, Aldi said it had closed a transaction to divest about 170 Winn-Dixie and Harveys Supermarket stores that are not part of the Aldi conversion plan to a consortium that includes C & S Wholesale Grocers, Southeastern Grocers senior leadership and private investors.