The corner of Woodbury Town Plaza that smelled like fresh bagels for years now smells like ginger and espresso. Joe & The Juice, the Copenhagen-born juice bar and cafe chain with more than 500 locations around the world, has opened its doors at 8025 Jericho Turnpike, in the storefront that was long home to Gabby's Bagels.

The second Long Island stop, and the bigger one

Woodbury is the chain's second Long Island cafe. The first opened in mid-July on Northern Boulevard in Manhasset, where a Sunday grand-opening party on July 19 came with lawn games and giveaways. The Woodbury space is the larger of the two at about 2,800 square feet, roomy enough for the laptop-and-smoothie crowd the brand courts everywhere it lands.

The cafe is open seven days a week, from 7 in the morning to 9 at night most days, with a shorter Monday. That is a long day for a juice bar, and it is the point: the company runs its shops as all-day hangouts, closer to a coffeehouse than a smoothie counter.

What is actually on the menu

The name undersells the range. Juices are pressed and blended to order, with house recipes like the Iron Man, which runs on apple, strawberry and kiwi, and the Pick Me Up, which leans on banana and apple. Alongside the juices there are shakes, proper espresso drinks, matcha, and a lineup of pressed flatbread sandwiches, wraps and bowls that has earned the chain a devoted lunch following in New York City, where it operates about 30 cafes.

Founded in Copenhagen in 2002 by Kaspar Basse, Joe & The Juice grew slowly in Scandinavia and then quickly everywhere else, reaching more than 70 locations in the United States. Until this summer, the closest ones to Nassau County were across the city line. Both Long Island cafes were announced last fall, when the company took the two storefronts in October 2025.

The corner it inherits

For the plaza, this is a changing of the guard. Gabby's Bagels held the space for years and was the kind of tenant neighbors describe as an institution, and the landlord, MGD Investments, has said the decision on a successor came down to fit: with a hot yoga and strength studio next door, a juice-and-coffee cafe made a natural pairing for the health-minded foot traffic the plaza already draws.

That logic runs through the whole deal. The company and its brokers have both described the Woodbury and Manhasset sites as picks aimed at active, wellness-forward suburbs, and both have said more Long Island locations are being sought. For now the two cafes bookend a stretch of Nassau County that has been collecting exactly this kind of tenant, from boutique fitness studios to fast-casual salad chains.

What it means for the neighborhood

Jericho Turnpike through Woodbury and Syosset has quietly become one of Nassau's busier food corridors, and the plaza sits in the middle of it. A global brand choosing a former bagel shop there says something about where the corridor is headed: the storefronts are the same, but the tenants increasingly come with hundreds of locations behind them.

For readers who grew up on Gabby's, the bagel era of that corner is over, and there is no way to dress that up. What has replaced it is at least a genuine daily-use spot rather than another phone store: somewhere to get breakfast at 7 a.m., a sandwich at noon, and a juice after a workout next door. If you have been curious what the fuss over this chain is about since it started spreading through Manhattan, the answer is now a parking lot away.