On September 8, the New York State Liquor Authority issued grocery store license 0081-26-153717 to North Fork DTC LLC, doing business as Bread and Butter, at 5087 Sound Avenue in Northville. Stripped of the paperwork language, that means the 1946 corner store that came back to life on Memorial Day weekend can now sell you a cold six-pack with your sandwich, and the license runs through August 2029.

The wine, for now, stays behind a different piece of paper. 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 new license actually covers

A grocery store license is the state's permission to sell packaged beer and cider to take home, the same class of license a supermarket carries. It took effect immediately on issue and runs through August 2029. For a store whose whole premise is stocking the neighborhood's own output, the timing is convenient: the license arrives just as the North Fork's harvest traffic does, and the fridge can now hold Long Island brewers alongside the local milk and eggs.

The cider half of the license may matter as much as the beer half out here. The East End has been quietly accumulating cider makers, and the state issued Long Island's newest farm cidery license just one day earlier, to 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 these licenses exist.

The company name on the license 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 it does not cover. Beer and cider, yes. Wine and spirits, no. New York still separates those into an entirely different license, held by an entirely different kind of store, which is where the second half of this building's plan comes in.

The wine shop next door is still in line

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 needs a liquor store license, and state records show that application, filed April 8 by a separate company set up for the purpose, was still listed as under review this week.

There is no schedule attached to an SLA review, and five months is not unusual. But the sequence is now set in public record: beer first, wine when Albany finishes reading. 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 Tuesday the state is officially in on the plan. If you drive Sound Avenue this fall, the store with the new license is the one worth the stop.