BUSINESS · LONG ISLAND

In 1998, two brothers running a produce distribution business took over a failing little market in East Meadow.

Carl and Phillip DelPrete, with partner Tom Barresi, turned it into the first Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace in 2001. There are now 13 stores across New York and New Jersey, and a 14th on the way.

“We were really just having fun and just wanted to provide the best customer experience the industry had to offer,” said Carl DelPrete, now the chain’s chief executive.

The idea was to take an Italian neighborhood — bakery, butcher, cheesemonger, deli — and put the whole thing under one roof.

“We made a conscious decision to create an Italian-centric market, reminiscent of the experience we had as kids,” he said. “The Little Italys of the world, Brooklyn and the Bronx.”

The Smithtown store in 2005 is where the format became what shoppers recognize now: painted ceilings, Roman columns, mozzarella pulled behind glass, samples handed out like a Sunday dinner host.

“Rather than write a business plan, we said, let’s just keep having fun, but just do it in a bigger way,” DelPrete said.

Bigger keeps getting bigger. A 40,000-square-foot store opened in Bohemia in November 2025 and a 56,000-square-foot store in Greenvale in August 2026, with Levittown later this year. In late 2027 the company plans its first Pennsylvania store, in King of Prussia, and a South Jersey location in Moorestown.

DelPrete’s argument is one every Main Street in the Town of Babylon has a stake in.

“I believe that mom-and-pop retailers, brick and mortar, are not dying — they just need to become experiential,” he said.

Stock photo: An Italian deli counter. Photo by Max Nayman / Unsplash; not taken at the location in this story.

Sources: Greater Long Island · Uncle Giuseppe’s Marketplace