King Kullen occupies a unique place in American retail history. When Michael J. Cullen opened his first store on Jamaica Avenue in Queens on August 4, 1930, he combined ideas that had existed separately in earlier grocery stores into a new kind of operation: a large store with multiple departments, extensive self-service, aggressive discount pricing, high sales volume, and room for customers arriving by automobile. That formula became the foundation of the modern American supermarket.
For generations of New Yorkers, however, King Kullen was more than a milestone in retail history. After beginning in Queens, the chain became deeply associated with Long Island, where the Cullen family continued operating the company for decades. That family-owned era finally ended in 2026, when Giunta’s Meat Farms completed its acquisition of King Kullen and its Wild by Nature stores.
Michael J. Cullen and the Idea That Changed Grocery Shopping
Michael J. Cullen was born in 1884 to Irish immigrant parents and entered the grocery business at age 18 with The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, better known as A&P. He spent 17 years with the company, eventually rising to division superintendent, before moving on to other grocery companies in the Midwest and ultimately Kroger.
By 1929, Cullen was managing dozens of Kroger stores in Illinois and had developed a radically different idea for selling groceries. In a letter to Kroger president William Albers, he proposed enormous stores located outside high-rent shopping districts, with plenty of parking, extensive self-service, low operating costs, and dramatically reduced prices. Cullen believed enormous sales volume could compensate for smaller profit margins on individual items…