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Fast on the heels of building its first full-sized dairy/grocery store on Long Island in East Farmingdale, Stew Leonard’s is planning another superstore in East Meadow.

The Norwalk, Conn.-based chain has plans to build its second full-sized Long Island location at the East Meadow Mall on Front Street, in the 70,000-square-foot space last occupied by a Pathmark supermarket that closed in May 2013, according to industry sources. Stew Leonard’s already had two of its wine stores here, in Carle Place and Airport Plaza in East Farmingdale, where it began construction of its 60,000-square-foot dairy store this spring. The newest Stew Leonard’s would join co-anchor Marshalls at the East Meadow center.

The family-owned regional chain – once called “the Disneyland of dairy stores” by The New York Times – currently operates four dairy stores. It has three in Connecticut – Norwalk, Danbury and Newington – and one in Yonkers. Stew Leonard’s began with a 17,000-square-foot Norwalk store in 1969, soon after patriarch Charles Leonard’s nearby Clover Farms Dairy was paved over by a highway project. The original store was expanded several times before a second store, 130,000 square feet in Danbury, opened in 1991. A year later, the company earned recognition from the Guinness Book of World Records for having “the greatest sales per unit area of any single food store in the United States.”

Today, the Stew Leonard’s chain, now headed by Charles Leonard’s grandson, Stew Leonard Jr., boasts annual revenues that eclipse $300 million. The East Meadow lease is being negotiated by Jeff Nable of Jericho-based Ripco Real Estate and the shopping center’s Valley Stream-based landlord Serota Properties. Neither would confirm nor comment on the Stew Leonard’s deal.

At Airport Plaza, the Stew Leonard’s is replacing Dave & Buster’s which vacated the space—the East Farmingdale center’s second largest next to Home Depot—after its lease expired with landlord Kimco Realty in February. The Stew Leonard’s at Airport Plaza is slated to open early in 2016. Stew Leonard’s previous attempt to build one of its full-sized stores in East Farmingdale in 2003 was unsuccessful. The chain wanted to build a 150,000-square-foot store at the intersection of Route 110 and Conklin Street, next to Airport Plaza. But the management of adjacent Republic Airport and some aviation groups complained that the store would lie in the flight path of Republic’s runway.

A proposal to move the store to a site 1,000 feet to the south didn’t fly with Stew Leonard’s or the Town of Babylon, and the project fizzled.

When you have a good idea, it’s generally good advice to sleep on it. But Gregg Richard, CEO of P.C. Richard & Son, slept on one big idea for three years before rolling it out. Now other people are sleeping on it.

While the more-than-a-century-old independent chain based in Farmingdale routinely adds products, it a year ago almost to the day began selling mattresses at a few stores.

The firm will have mattresses in 56 of its 66 stores (including a dozen of 19 Long Island locations) within a week and anticipates mattress “galleries” in all its stores within two months.

“We felt we were sending our customers to our competitors, because we weren’t giving them the choice,” Gregg Richard said. “Now that they have a choice, they’ve proven to us that we were right. They’d rather buy from us.”

The firm is rolling out the mattresses more rapidly than planned, because Richard said the category has been “successful beyond my wildest dreams.”

“Because of the success last year, it was an all-out team effort to get these open as quick as humanly possible,” he said.

It might be an irony that mattresses are proving a way to wake up sales, which weakened in some categories. Customers still flock to P.C. Richard & Son for refrigerators, stoves, ovens and appliances, but some buy electronics, well, electronically.

“The electronics business isn’t what it used to be,” Richard said. “The computer, home-office category hasn’t been terrific, but we’re still doing fairly well. If our customers want something, we’ll be there to sell it to them.”

While to an outsider, selling mattresses may seem a departure, some bed frames and mattresses involve technology. And when people buy houses, they often need refrigerators, TVs and a place to sleep.

The firm, which says it’s “changing the way you buy a mattress,” sells Sealy Posturepedic, Stearns & Foster, Optimum and Tempur-Pedic as well as other brands.

“The most difficult part of the mattress business is operational,” Richard continued. “You need showrooms. We have them. You need great salespeople. We have them. You need advertising. We have it. You need a warehouse. You need trucking, home delivery, drivers and helpers. We have it. And we have the loyal customers.”

Other appliance and electronics retailers already went into the bedding business, such as Conn’s HomePlus, RC Willey, ABT, ABC Warehouse and BrandsMart USA.

“I talked to these guys. They said it’s a good business,” Richard continued. “I’m friendly with most of them. I kept pushing it off.”

The firm got requests for mattresses on customer cards filled out in stores. Then it tested the concept, tucking mattress “galleries” in the back of seven Connecticut stores a year ago. Mattress galleries sprouted in spaces used for stockrooms, rather than displacing items.

“We were able to break through the walls and make the stores a little bigger,” he said. “It required a lot of capital to get in the business. It forced us to look at every store. And when we went in to do the mattress galleries, we gave many stores a facelift.”

The company, which paid for renovations out of funds from operations, sells 20 different mattresses in its 10,000-square-foot Rego Park, Queens store and 35 in the 50,000-square-foot Riverhead store.

“Each store is different,” he said. “We have enough of a section, so our customers can make an educated decision.”

The retailer offers mattresses and bedframes ranging from under $200 to $10,000. Some frames offer massages, go up and down and include USB ports, phone plugs and chargers.

Although the firm says it will match others’ prices, it provides information about the product, including how it’s built, hand stitching, foam and oils. But comfort is king.

“It’s what you’re comfortable on, what you’re used to sleeping on,” Richard said.

He assumed customers would want to test mattresses, but he’s finding many choose convenience, buying online.

“I thought people would educate themselves, come into the store,” he said. “The business we do online without people ever lying on a mattress is amazing.”

Although some customers are surprised to see P.C. Richard’s softer side, Richard says his firm evolved, initially selling hardware, adding appliances in 1909 and by the 1930s and 1940s selling TVs.

“We started as a hardware store. We don’t sell hardware anymore,” Richard said. “We’ve changed our business model many times. Microwaves used to be a gigantic part of our business. VCRs. That turned into DVD players. CD players were big. It changed to the iPod and Wi-Fi.”

Executives have moved back and forth between appliance and electronics and mattress retail, bridging the two businesses. The former CEO of Bosch Appliances is president of Serta and a former Whirlpool executive is a top executive at Sealy Posturepedic.

“Lots of customers come in to buy a mattress and wind up buying something else too,” he said. “Maybe they buy a TV. It’s the advantage we have. We have lots of categories.”

P.C. Richard delivers on its promises, charging $49 for delivery, set-up and disposal of old mattresses, although it periodically offers free delivery.

And it’s expanding into the fitness business, selling Fitbits and trackers that measure steps, heart rate and calories, as well as home security and automation equipment, including smart thermostats and devices that use phones to unlock doors.

It sells home-office desks and some furniture used with TVs, but don’t expect the chain to turn into a furniture store.

“We’re not at this point selling dining room sets or couches,” Richard said. “We’re not looking to expand deep into home furnishings.”

The store expanded its slogan from the “appliance, TV, electronics giant” to “the appliance, TV, electronics, mattress giant.”

“The mattress business is very similar to our business,” Richard said. “The peak times are really the same holidays.”

The store competes with specialty retailers such as Bethpage-based Sleepy’s and department stores, but Richard believes his firm is simply expanding its niche.

“I’ve been competing with people for 105 years,” Richard said. “Most of them aren’t here. Competition isn’t new to us.”

There is a risk that a customer unhappy with a mattress could be turned off to the store and that online orders could be cancelled. But Richard isn’t losing sleep over possible problems, as the firm finds money hidden under mattresses.

“We’re in business to make customers,” Richard said. “We’re not in business to try to make an extra-quick buck for the short term.”

U.S. companies stepped up hiring in May, a private survey found, evidence that employers remain confident in the economy even after it contracted at the start of the year.

Payroll processor ADP said Wednesday businesses added 201,000 jobs last month, up from just 165,000 in the previous month. April’s increase was the smallest in a year and a half.

The figures suggest that the economy is recovering after it shrank at a 0.7 percent annual rate in the first quarter. On Friday, the government will issue its official jobs report for May. Economists forecast it will show that employers added 227,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate remained 5.4 percent.

The ADP survey covers only private businesses, however, and frequently diverges from the official figures.

Construction companies added 27,000 jobs, ADP said, while manufacturers cut 5,000 jobs. The drop in factory jobs likely reflects the impact of the stronger dollar, which makes U.S. goods more expensive overseas and cuts into export sales.

Other recent reports have painted a mixed picture of the economy. Consumers remain cautious and are reluctant to spend their savings from lower gas prices, which are about $1 a gallon cheaper than a year ago. On Monday, the government said consumer spending was unchanged in April. Instead, the savings rate rose to 5.6 percent from 5.2 percent.

Yet Americans were willing to spend more on cars last month. Auto sales rose 2 percent in May to 1.64 million cars and trucks, according to Autodata Corp. That was the fastest sales pace since July 2005.

And a survey of manufacturing firms showed that factory activity grew at a faster pace in May than the previous month, driven higher by more new orders and greater hiring.

Overall, analysts expect the economy will expand at about a 2 percent annual pace in the second quarter. That would leave growth in the first half of the year barely above 0.5 percent, down from a 3.6 percent in the second half of last year.

Cincinnati-based retail giant Macy’s Inc. is facing pressure to make some changes to its real estate strategy, Reuters reports.

Several hedge funds have asked Macy’s (NYSE: M) to sell more of its major stores and lease them back in a fashion that has benefited several other major retailers in recent months.

Macy’s and its financial advisers are listening to shareholders’ ideas on the matter but haven’t made any decisions yet. So far the company appears to be more interested in reducing its margins in its real estate portfolio as its management is concerned that a sale-leaseback strategy would burden it with expenses that would hinder its profitability and weaken its overall finances.

One of the properties hedge fund managers have highlighted for potential sale is Macy’s flagship Herald Square location in New York, but sources told Reuters that move is unlikely because of the location’s value as a tourist attraction and the role it plays in Macy’s identity and brand.

Macy’s owns 447 of its 823 stores along with several offices that have a total book value of $7.8 billion.

During the company’s first quarter earnings call, CFO Karen Hoguet said the company’s real estate strategy may have been carried out “over simplistically” up to this point and said a review of its holdings along with possible strategies is underway.

Macy’s operates 885 stores in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Dubai, Guam and Puerto Rico under the Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Boomingdale’s Outlet and Bluemercury brands

As Amazon.com prepares to launch a same-day delivery service by drones that will spearhead online shipping to new heights, a 19th-century mode of transport for heavy and bulk commodities is alive and growing again on Long Island.

The New York & Atlantic Railway (NY&A) runs about a dozen locomotives across 269 route lines, exclusively on Long Island lines, from Bay Ridge to Montauk, hauling everything from lumber to biofuels and beer.

The short line freight railroad made news recently after one of its cars derailed and crushed signal machinery, the rebuilding of which caused delays for several days on the Ronkonkoma line. But the company’s ongoing role as the lifeblood of the roughly 80 companies it serves is perhaps lesser known.

“We’ve become an integral part of every business we service because there is a tie between what they do with what we do,” NY&A President Paul Victor told Long Island Business News from the railway’s main freight yard in Fresh Pond Junction.

The railway primarily carries materials for construction, including vast amounts of aggregate used to make asphalt for roads and cement for construction of high-rise buildings in Manhattan. The other commodities it hauls include lumber, drywall and brick.

“All together, that’s a significant amount of our traffic base,” Victor said. Among NY&A’s customers is the Brooklyn-based D&M Lumber Products, which deals in wood products for wholesale and retail distribution from Bushwick and Maspeth. The company, which typically works directly with lumber yards, is part of 25 route miles of freight-only LIRR line that the railway operates in Brooklyn and Queens.

“We bring in products to our facilities and reload them on to customers’ trucks that are deliver to people in the New York and Brooklyn area,” said Assaf Packin, D&M’s director of new business development and strategy.

In addition to the Brooklyn-Queens component, LIRR’s rail network is divided into two other parts. One involves a passenger-only line, such as the tracks that run between Penn and Jamaica stations, where freight customers are non-existent.  The other allows freight and passenger trains to share the same lines that include neighboring tracks that consists of short, disconnected spans.

In 1997, NY&A was launched as part of a private concession to operate freight trains on LIRR’s lines. As part of a long-term lease agreement, the railway pays the public commuter railroad revenue based on its carloads. NY&A is an affiliate of Anacostia Rail Holdings and is among sixshort line freight railroads that the Chicago-based corporation owns and manages. Its entire system links to all states, as well as Canada and Mexico. When NY&A launched, the number of annual carloads was about 10,000; that number last year hit 28,000.

“You always have economic cycles that go up and down, but largely speaking the company has almost tripled its traffic over the life of the concession so far,” Victor said of NY&A’s growth.

Another customer, Elm Global Logistics, is a Brentwood-based warehouse and shipping transfer facility that also receives freight from trucks, although it has moved toward using more rail. ELM deals mainly in cornmeal manufactured in Texas, Indiana and California that is shipped to the company’s 500,000-square-foot facility, from where the products are distributed throughout the East Coast. The company also handles by rail rolled paper, lumber, and General Mills products, including Quaker Oats.

“There are a lot of things that we do via rail that is slowly increasing,” said ELM owner Bill Conboy. Conboy noted that while in past decades many companies found it more cost effective to use freight trucks after the industry underwent deregulations, the pendulum has started to swing back to rail.

“There are many commodities that it pays if you buy in bulk, especially if they are manufactured in middle America or the West Coast, to put on rail, because it’s a lot more cost effective,” he said.

The average freight car’s capacity is equal to about 4 to 4.5 trucks, and the deferential in gross fuel efficiency is roughly about 4 to 1, according to Victor. D&M Lumber Products, for example, switched to rail deliveries in 2007, after trucks that arrived from New Jersey and beyond proved too costly in terms of tolls and other expenses.

“Depending on the freight rate, it’s usually about a 30 to 35 percent savings in freight alone,” Conboy said of trains compared to trucks. “Our customers usually see a significant benefit by using the rail.”

Conboy added that despite the significant savings from rail, transport by train takes more time. Many companies no longer want to hold inventory and want to receive materials in a relatively short time span.

“Some companies do both: they’ll ship in trucks if they need something quickly, or they’ll send it on rail and save a lot of money if they don’t have to have it by tomorrow,” he said.

The combined freight rail traffic on U.S. railroads was 28.6 million carloads, containers and trailers, an increase of 1.2 million unit or 4.5 percent over 2013 and the highest annual total since 2007, according to an end-of-year report of the Association of American Railroads.

The Brookhaven Rail Terminal, a privately-funded “transload” terminal on 28-acres of land in Yaphank, also serves multiple customers since it started to receive NY&A freight trains in 2012. The terminal handles mostly bulk flour that is used primarily by bakeries on Long Island, delivered on about 35 rail cars per month. The terminal deals heavily in lumber for a number of companies, including Medford-based Triangle Building Products, Riverhead Building Supply and Home Depot.

BRT President Jim Newel said that in the terminal’s first year of operation, it handled nearly 500 freight cars; last year it received 2,000 cars. “It has doubled in each of the three years it has been in operation,” Newel said.

Victor noted that NY&A is a common carrier open to any company that can meet its net contents for bulk traffic. Some customers have invested in tracks that connect their facilities to LIRR’s lines. ELM has tracks that run inside its facility that existed when the company in 1981 moved into its building, a former Hills Supermarket distribution center.

“When they connect our track to their track,” he said, “it’s like their connecting to a phone company or power company.”

Arrow Electronics Inc., once Long Island’s largest public company by revenue, is shrinking its local work force again, a spokesman said Thursday.

The electronic-parts distributor plans to relocate 150 jobs, mostly in its finance, legal and transportation-services departments, to the company’s headquarters in Colorado, said spokesman John Hourigan.

That would leave 265 Arrow employees on Long Island, compared with as many as 1,000 the company once employed here. In 2011, Arrow moved its headquarters from Melville to Colorado, where its chief executives lives.

Hourigan said the relocations would happen gradually over this year and into early 2016 “to into early 2016 “to minimize any disruptions.”