New grocery store to bring full-service food options to Brentwood

Brentwood’s planned 8,500-square-foot grocery store could bring a full-service food source closer to families in a hamlet long described as supermarket-starved. The project is expected to include a deli, butcher department, produce, dairy, frozen and dry goods, plus a fresh juice bar and a hot food bar, a mix that points to a neighborhood market rather than a convenience shop.

That distinction matters in Brentwood, where the cost of grocery shopping has not been just about prices at the register. When residents have had to travel farther for staples, the trip has added time, transportation costs and another layer of pressure to household budgets. A store with full-service departments can change the weekly routine by reducing the need for long trips, giving workers a closer place to shop after a shift and offering prepared food alongside ingredients for home cooking.

The opening also comes against a broader Suffolk County food-access problem that remains measurable. Feeding America estimated 132,710 food-insecure people in Suffolk County in 2023, put the county’s food insecurity rate at 8.7 percent and calculated an annual food budget shortfall of $104.092 million. Island Harvest Food Bank said in May 2025 that food insecurity in Nassau and Suffolk counties rose 10 percent in 2023, underscoring how the issue has intensified even as supermarket development has remained uneven across Long Island.

Federal and state policymakers have framed the shortage as an access problem as much as a pricing problem. In 2024, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said, “An easily accessible grocery store is a basic necessity, but for years, some residents of Suffolk County haven’t had consistent access to one.” The USDA Economic Research Service’s Food Access Research Atlas remains the federal mapping tool used to identify low-access and low-income census tracts, the same kind of data set that has long shaped discussions about where new food retailers are most needed.

Brentwood already has grocery options, including Food Bazaar at 101 Wicks Rd, Stop & Shop at 329 Crooked Hill Rd, ShopRite at 86 Cain Dr, Compare Foods at 1070 Islip Ave and Brentwood Market at 1626 Brentwood Rd. That means the new store is less about creating grocery access from scratch than about improving proximity, variety and convenience in a community where those differences still matter. A similar 8,500-square-foot Fine Fare project in Bellport was described with the same kind of full-service deli, butcher, juice bar and prepared hot foods, suggesting Brentwood’s store is being built to serve as a compact but serious neighborhood market.