Northville grocery returns as Bread and Butter opens on Sound Avenue

A new grocery on Sound Avenue was poised to become more than a nostalgic revival: Bread and Butter was set to be the only grocery within five miles in any direction, giving Northville residents and nearby workers a practical place for staples, prepared food and last-minute errands. Diana Roesch DiMenna planned to open the market over Memorial Day weekend, with an adjoining liquor store, & Bottle, to follow once the State Liquor Authority issued its license.

The project brought back the former Wegert’s Grocery site, a corner of Northville that has served as a daily stop for generations. One of the two buildings on the property dates to at least 1942, and the layout still reflects a small-country-store scale rather than a strip-mall rebuild. Property records describe the site at 5087 Sound Ave. in Riverhead as a two-building retail-residential property of about 2,300 square feet on 0.45 acres, with 11 parking spaces. The larger building is about 1,700 square feet and the smaller liquor-store space about 600 square feet.

DiMenna, who moved to Riverhead two years ago, said she wanted Bread and Butter to function as a modern country store, with locally sourced food, grocery staples and freshly cooked items that could also support the farm economy around the North Fork. Her daughter Claire runs the animal sanctuary Critterville on nearby land, and her daughter Tess is her partner on the project.

For longtime North Fork residents, the reopening also restored a piece of local memory. Richard Wines, who grew up near the store, said it was already there when he started at Northville School in 1952, and the school still sits next door.

The store changed hands in 2011, when Mualla Ergulec reopened it as the Sound Avenue Grocery Store and Sound Avenue Liquor Store. At that time, the grocery offered basic provisions, planned a deli counter with Boar’s Head cold cuts and expected to add a full kitchen for the summer season. Ergulec kept the iconic 1950s-era Wegert’s sign after neighbors urged her to preserve it as a local landmark.

The new Bread and Butter operation carried the same challenge, but in a tougher retail environment: to survive on the East End, a small market now has to be both convenience stop and destination. On Sound Avenue, where the landscape still carries the feel of a historic corridor, that means selling enough everyday food to matter and enough local character to keep people coming back.