With less than a month to go before Connecticut's largest grocery chain closes the doors on five of its stores in the state, customers visiting those Stop & Shop sites are finding empty parking lots and largely bare shelves.

The stores in Ansonia, Danbury, Milford, Stamford and Torrington are scheduled to close on or before the first week of November as part of a larger shutdown of Stop & Shop locations company-wide. Visits to all five locations by Hearst Connecticut Media and CT Insider reporters found a vast amount of empty shelves as Stop & Shop sells off what's left of the inventory in those locations.

Signs are up at stores in Danbury that state the store is closing on Halloween. And customers in Milford, Stamford, Torrington and Ansonia are being told those locations will also close on Oct. 31.

Stephanie Cunha, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts-based grocer, did not provide specific dates for the closing of the five Connecticut stores, but said: "we will continue to stock produce, dairy, meat, deli and essentials until the last day of operation at our impacted locations."

"However, the remainder of our products are not being restocked once they have sold through," Cunha said on Friday, referring to nonperishable items.

Torrington, Stamford, Milford and Danbury all have multiple Stop & Shop stores right now. Company-wide the supermarket chain has 397 grocery stores in five state, with plans to close 32 of those locations. That will leave Stop & Shop with more than 350 stores in all five states.

When Stop & Shop announced the store closings earlier this year, company officials had said employees of the stores that were closing would be offered jobs at other locations, based on the needs of Stop & Shop and the employees themselves.

Cunha said Friday that of the staff who wanted to stay employed by the company, all "have been reassigned, and many have already started at their new locations."

"We're in the process of welcoming them aboard into their new roles and we have an associate appreciation day planned to celebrate our team, once everyone has settled into their new home stores," Cunha said, adding: "We have a very small group of associates who elected not to take new positions, but were grateful for the opportunity to move forward."

She declined to provide details on how many workers elected to take new positions with the company at other locations or how many opted out.

But Burt Flickinger, managing director of the New York City-based retail consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, said his company's research indicates that Stop & shop's claims are somewhat misleading. Flickinger said while full-timers at the Stop & Shop stores that are closing are being offered the best reassignments, young part-timers are being offered less desirable new positions.

"Some of these younger part-timers are being offered reassignments that are less than 30 hours a week, but are split between two locations," he said. "These are young people who are committed to the company and some of them are enrolled in management training programs."

Flickinger also noted that closing the Connecticut stores on Halloween is a big strategic mistake.

"People are coming to these stores to buy Halloween candy and other items," he said. "And when they get there and find these stores don't have what they need, they are going to leave and never come back to another Stop & Shop location."

Stop & Shop announced its store closings in July. The chain, which is owned by Dutch grocery giant Ahold Delhaize, has 88 stores in Connecticut.

Staff writers and editors Donald Eng, Victoria Stavish, Ethan Fry and Alex Soule contributed to this story.