Waldbaum's

Ghost Corp Apparel — resurrecting iconic corporate ghosts.

Waldbaum’s began in Brooklyn in 1904, when Sam and Wolf Waldbaum opened a neighborhood grocery. Their nephew Israel “Izzy” Waldbaum joined the business and eventually carried it forward; after his death in 1948, his son Ira took charge of six Brooklyn stores. A familiar local grocer was becoming a serious regional food machine.

The company opened its first supermarket in Flushing, Queens, in 1951, went public in 1961 while the family retained control, and expanded beyond New York. By the mid-1970s, Waldbaum, Inc. had moved its headquarters and distribution operations to Central Islip on Long Island. Its stores became fixtures from the city boroughs to Long Island, with the name practically synonymous with the weekly cart-and-circular ritual.

A&P acquired Waldbaum’s from the founding family in late 1986. The banner continued under A&P, even as the parent company remade its store portfolio and sold some locations. In 2015, A&P entered Chapter 11 proceedings, stores were sold or closed, and Waldbaum’s disappeared from the supermarket landscape. The shopping list survived; the sign did not.

Our Waldbaum's collection celebrates the Brooklyn-to-Long Island grocery ghost: fluorescent aisles, private-label optimism, bakery-counter diplomacy, and the eternal mystery of why the express lane was never actually express.