The most photographed building at Station Yards is the little standalone bakery on the Village Green, the one with the croissant line that forms before most of Ronkonkoma is awake. As of this week, its owners are planning for the other end of the day. FW ONE LLC, the company behind The French Workshop's Ronkonkoma cafe, filed an application with the New York State Liquor Authority on August 28 for an on-premises restaurant license at 5 Hawkins Avenue.

What the paperwork says

The application, NA-0340-26-125314 in the Liquor Authority's pending file, is a restaurant class license, the full version that covers beer, wine and spirits served at the table. It names FW ONE LLC at 5 Hawkins Avenue in Ronkonkoma, and its status reads intake complete, which means the paperwork is in and the examination phase comes next. Pending applications in Nassau and Suffolk typically sit in that file for a few weeks to a few months before a decision.

The company itself is not new. State records show FW ONE LLC registered in Suffolk County in October 2024, through a Sayville address, almost two years before the filing landed. The name reads like exactly what it is: the first French Workshop for the group that brought the bakery east.

The bakery on the green

The French Workshop started in Bayside, Queens in 2015, built on the model of a Parisian boulangerie: an open workshop turning out pastries, cakes, pies, croissants and sandwiches, with espresso drinks to carry them. It grew a devoted Nassau County following, with locations in Garden City, Plainview and Wantagh, before crossing the county line for the first time this summer.

That first Suffolk location is the one this filing covers. The announcement put the Ronkonkoma store at 3,800 square feet, in the standalone building that anchors the Village Green at the center of Station Yards, the mixed-use neighborhood that has grown up around the Ronkonkoma train station. The Ronkonkoma Chamber of Commerce now lists the bakery on its member roster at the same address the license application names.

The group behind it

The French Workshop's Ronkonkoma store is a franchise, the chain's first, and the franchisee is a name South Shore diners already know. Upstream Hospitality Group, based on West Main Street in Patchogue, runs nine Tap Room gastropubs across Long Island, the Bango Bowls chain, and a string of seasonal beach operations including the Salt Shack and the Boat Yard. One of those nine Tap Rooms sits at 1 Hawkins Avenue, a short walk across Station Yards from the bakery.

Upstream's co-founder James Bonanno has said he discovered The French Workshop while opening the Garden City Tap Room, and that the Ronkonkoma Tap Room's performance at Station Yards convinced the group the two brands could work side by side there. The liquor filing is the logical next step in that plan. Upstream's other concepts are built around the bar as much as the kitchen, and a bakery cafe that runs from early morning into the evening is currently the only one of its neighbors on the green without a drinks list.

What it would mean

Station Yards has quietly assembled a full night out within a block of the train platform: Vespa for Italian, Lucharitos for Tex-Mex, Artemis for cocktails, Great South Bay Brewery for pints, Tap Room for burgers and taps. What the district has not had is a place where a glass of wine comes with an eclair rather than an entree.

A restaurant license would let The French Workshop serve exactly that. The cafe already runs well past dinner hour, and the French model it borrows from has always treated the boulangerie as an all-day room, coffee in the morning and something stronger once the light goes. Nothing about the menu has been announced, and the license itself is months from a decision, so the near-term experience of the croissant line does not change.

But the direction is clear enough. The building that taught Ronkonkoma to line up for breakfast is being set up for the evening, and the group doing it has opened enough bars on Long Island to know what a room by the train station is worth after dark. If the Liquor Authority signs off, the Village Green gets its first wine with dessert, no transfer required.