Waldbaum's Recovers from Tropical Storm Irene

After Tropical Storm Irene hit Long Island and took out power to many in Commack, grocery stores such as on Vanderbilt Motor Parkway were faced with the challenge of handling a store put in the dark.

Waldbaum’s was without power on Sunday and Monday, quickly spoiling the refrigerated sections of the store. The entirety of the dairy, meat, fish, and deli departments had to be quickly diposed of, as well as all two aisles of frozen food and half of the produce section, said a Waldbaum’s employee.

It took the employees about two and a half days to remove all of the spoiled food.

The store has insurance on its food for such power outages or other natural disasters, so the supermarket was able to rapidly order new shipments to replace lost stock.

“New food is still being put back day by day,” said the employee.  Trucks with perishables that typically bring 200 items at a time have been increased to bring 250 to 700 items in a trip, totaling 1,250 items coming into the store starting on Monday.

“People don’t mind,” the employee said. “All of the food is brand new, and everyone is kind of happy about that… People don’t have to be worried, because everything they see on the shelves is new. It’s kind of a blessing in disguise.”

As of Friday, the store is 85-90% full as far as replenished stock, and new deliveries are constantly coming in. Waldbaum’s is expecting to be completely back on its feet by either Sunday or Monday.