As of September 8, the 1946 corner store that came back to life on Memorial Day weekend can sell you a cold six-pack with your sandwich. Bread and Butter, the market run by North Fork DTC LLC at 5087 Sound Avenue in Northville, now stocks packaged beer and cider to take home, the same way a supermarket does.

The wine, for now, stays next door. More on that below.

Eighty years on one corner

Northville is the little farm hamlet where Sound Avenue threads between Riverhead and Aquebogue, the road every pumpkin picker and winery tripper takes into the North Fork. The store on its corner opened in 1946 as the Sound Avenue Deli, by the business's own account, and traded across the decades under a series of names that longtime neighbors can recite, most recently as the Sound Avenue Grocery.

Its current chapter began when Diana Roesch DiMenna and her daughters Tess and Claire moved to the North Fork in 2024 and decided the corner deserved better than fading. They reopened it this past Memorial Day weekend as Bread and Butter, a modern general store stocked the way the road outside suggests: farm produce, store-made baked goods, sandwiches, coffee, ice cream and shelves of North Fork producers, open seven days a week.

What the fridge can hold now

The store can now sell packaged beer and cider to take home, the same range a supermarket carries. For a store whose whole premise is stocking the neighborhood's own output, the timing is convenient: the beer fridge arrives just as the North Fork's harvest traffic does, and it can hold Long Island brewers alongside the local milk and eggs.

The cider half of the news may matter as much as the beer half out here. The East End has been quietly accumulating cider makers, and Long Island's newest cidery stood up just one day earlier, at a farm in Manorville, a short drive down the road. A general store on the North Fork's main tourist artery that can stock the region's own cider next to its own pie is a small, complete argument for why a corner store still matters.

The company name behind the store hints at the ambition. North Fork DTC LLC reads like retail shorthand, the initials that usually stand for direct to consumer, which is a reasonable summary of what a modern general store is: the place where the farms up and down Sound Avenue meet the people driving past them.

It is worth being precise about what the store does not carry. Beer and cider, yes. Wine and spirits, no. New York still routes those through an entirely different kind of shop, which is where the second half of this building's plan comes in.

The wine shop next door is coming

The revival was always designed as a pair: Bread and Butter, the market, in Unit A, and a compact bottle shop called & Bottle in Unit B, planned for curated wines, spirits and rotating spotlights on local vineyards. The bottle shop is not open yet. State records show the plan has been in motion since early April under a separate company set up for the purpose, and its debut is still ahead.

There is no announced date, and these things take time; five months of runway is not unusual for a shop like this. But the sequence is now set: beer first, wine to follow. A corner that spent years as a fading grocery is halfway to being the kind of stop where you can assemble an entire North Fork afternoon, sandwich, pie, local lager, and eventually the bottle for dinner, without pulling back onto the road in between.

Why this corner is worth watching

Sound Avenue is the North Fork's front porch, and it is about to have its busiest six weeks of the year. The farm stands are turning over to apples and pumpkins, the weekend caravans start this month, and the hamlets along the route live or die by whether the old buildings find new reasons to exist. This one found a family willing to bet on it, and as of this week the bet includes a cold case of local beer. If you drive Sound Avenue this fall, the store with the new fridge is the one worth the stop.