Initially the stores sold only grocery items but soon after added meats, produce, milk, dairy, and some frozen foods.

[7] In the late 1980s, following a hostile takeover bid by Herbert Haft's Dart Group, The Stop & Shop Supermarket Company was acquired by leveraged buyout specialists KKR and was taken private.

After several years, while KKR explored merger possibilities with Safeway (which it also controlled at the time), Stop & Shop was sold at public offering.

By 1990, Stop & Shop operated in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and in Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts areas, with one store in New York state.

Following negotiations with Blumenthal, Ahold decided to convert its New England stores to the Stop & Shop banner, while selling some locations to other chains such as Shaw's, ShopRite, and Grand Union.

In 2001, Ahold made moves to expand the Stop & Shop brand further into New Jersey and New York; these came as Grand Union, one of its competitors, was going through a bankruptcy liquidation.

Ahold in turn started supplying these stores with merchandise but did not immediately rebrand their acquisitions to Stop & Shop; that would happen in the spring and summer of 2001.

In 2003, Ahold acquired many of the A&P Foodmart locations in the Hartford, Connecticut area, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and the one remaining New Hampshire store.

In October 2007, Stop & Shop launched an advertising campaign which was intended to have users submit stories and videos to a website detailing their grocery store experiences.

The campaign was significant in that it is an early example of a regional traditional brand employing Web 2.0 concepts such as user-generated content to promote their stores.

In August 2009, Stop & Shop announced closures and re-brandings for a large portion of the licensed Starbucks stores opened in 2006.

[14] By late 2013, Stop & Shop had a very strong base in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, with more stores in New York and New Jersey.

In April 2015, Stop & Shop started construction of an anaerobic digester at its distribution center in Freetown, Massachusetts,[16] which now supplies 40% of the site's electricity needs.

[17] In July 2015, Stop & Shop announced the intentions to purchase 25 stores from A&P (which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier that month), including A&P's most profitable location in Mt.

As of March 2018, Stop & Shop operated 411 stores throughout the three southern New England states, as well as in downstate New York and northern New Jersey.

[22] On June 10, 2020, it was announced that the acquisition deal had been terminated and that King Kullen would remain independent due to "unforeseen changes in the marketplace".

[23] On July 12, 2024, Stop & Shop announced the closure of 32 underperforming locations as part of a plan to improve the company's financing.

The company faced serious competition from other nearby grocers and high rising costs, which caused the decision to close some of its stores.

The restrictions state that the property cannot be used to sell fresh fruits and vegetables, baked goods, dairy products, frozen foods, fish, poultry, and meat.

The property, which was purchased by Daniel J. Quirk and developed as a car dealership, sits directly across the highway from a Super Stop & Shop.

[25] Another shell company with ties to Stop & Shop placed similar deed restrictions on a property in Harwich, Massachusetts before selling it to Eastward Homes Business Trust in 2006.

[29] The stop-and-go negotiations concluded with a three-year contract overwhelmingly ratified by union members across New England, and a strike was averted.

[31] In an effort to reach a memorandum of understanding before the contract's expiration date, the five local chapters of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) that represents 30,000 of Stop & Shop's employees in locations across New England, in the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut[32] began negotiating a new contract on January 14, 2019.

[33] However, progress was effectively halted in early-to-mid February after Stop & Shop presented their monetary and payroll requirements for the upcoming agreement's term.

[33] The proposal effectively strips all of the company's union employees of premium pay on national holidays and Sundays (bringing the store in line with current state law, which eliminated Sunday overtime pay), while also eliminating any raises, reducing contributions to pensions, and increasing healthcare costs.

[34] Negotiations continued in good faith between the two sides, but with no progress made, UFCW Local 1445 of Massachusetts became the first chapter to authorize a strike if needed on February 24, 2019.

[38] Candidates for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, including Bernie Sanders, the junior senator from Vermont, and former Vice President Joe Biden have stated support for Stop & Shop's employees strike for a fair contract.

[42] In 2023, high schoolers with the Hyde Square Task Force studied alleged price disparities between a Stop & Shop location in Boston's Jamaica Plain neighborhood, a lower-income community, and Boston's Dedham neighborhood, a community where the household income is four times more than that of Jamaica Plain.

The students reached out to Stop & Shop, who put out a statement saying that those numbers are proprietary and that many factors play into price decisions.