LIDL
Opened: February 25, 2026
Another new NYC LIDL! Like the Park Slope one, which opened recently, this new store in Manhattan's Kips Bay neighborhood (on the east side, slightly below Midtown East) is in a basement. The space was previously home to Bed Bath & Beyond, and now LIDL has claimed the approximately 21,000 square foot space as their own.
As is true in Park Slope, only a foyer with escalators and an elevator is at street level. The rest of the supermarket is in the basement.
So we start with produce at the front, then pass through the ready to eat (deli/prepared foods) and meat/seafood departments before getting to the bakery in the back-right corner. Dairy is on the back wall and frozen is in the last aisle.
You can tell here that LIDL is working with an unusual space, and they've made the best of it. (Even Park Slope was a new-build store, so it was slightly more to their specifications.)
This store opened on Wednesday, and I visited on Friday. It wasn't grand opening day, but it was packed with shoppers the way that it would be on a grand opening day. I don't know if that's just the regular shopper flow here or if it's still because it's a new store.
Regardless, LIDL has seen some significant success in NYC because of the prices, of course, and the fact that most ALDIs are pretty messy but the NYC locations are particularly bleak. ALDI has more stores than LIDL within NYC (14 vs. 12), but LIDL has at least one or two more locations underway to open soon.
LIDL stores in New York City are slightly more expensive than their suburban counterparts, but in my anecdotal comparisons, they're usually a difference of cents (such as an item being $3.05 in the suburbs and $3.09 in the city, or $1.99 vs. $2.09).
The space here is especially tough because of the large columns throughout the store. They mostly have designed the aisles around the columns, so the aisles mostly aren't broken up by the columns except in locations where you can't help it, like this.
The bakery was a particularly popular destination.
We're roughly between the UN and the Empire State Building here (although farther south than either of those), so this isn't some far-flung neighborhood that resembles the outer boroughs. This is really the core of Manhattan, where ALDI doesn't have any stores, though they soon will have one in Hell's Kitchen.
However, this LIDL is literally directly across the street from a Trader Joe's.
It's also within a short walk of a Fairway, a Whole Foods, and multiple D'Agostinos.
Dairy continues a bit into the last aisle, with frozen in front of that.
In fact, it was so crowded that in some areas, it was difficult to get pictures. People seemed to be especially clustering around the $3/gallon milk, half the price of D'Agostino.
The decor is completely invisible in most of this store, and as much as I wish it would've been a little more exciting design-wise, I also know that's not why you go to LIDL.
This is also the first LIDL I've seen with mostly self-checkout, and a few staffed registers up at the front. As you can see, every register was necessary, and there was a line of people waiting to check out.
Well, it looks like LIDL is going to continue growing here in NYC, and you can be sure I'll be there when they open new stores. (Williamsburg should be coming in the next few months!) But for now, here's the rest of this weekend's other posts:
Opened: February 25, 2026
Owner: Schwarz Group
Previous Tenants: Bed Bath & Beyond
Cooperative: none
Location: 460 3rd Ave, Manhattan, NY
Photographed: February 27, 2026
And because it's a basement store, the space is, well, weird. Just like every other supermarket in New York City. So here's a fire exit plan, and I've added the basic department layout to give you an idea. (Ignore the arrows -- they're for the fire exit paths, not the shopping flow.)
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