New life for an iconic Sound Avenue grocery: Bread and Butter plans Memorial Day opening

An iconic Sound Avenue grocery store is being brought back to life, as a local entrepreneur transforms the former Wegert’s Grocery into a modern take on a country store.

Diana Roesch DiMenna is renovating the two buildings on the property, one of which dates back to at least the 1940s. She plans a Memorial Day Weekend for Bread and Butter, a deli and market, with the adjacent “& Bottle,” liquor store opening as soon as the State Liquor Authority issues its license. 

For decades, the grocery was the center of the small hamlet of Northville, the only place where residents could pick up everyday essentials .. 

“It was the only store in Northville,” said Richard Wines, who grew up a few doors down from the grocery. A local historian and chair of the Riverhead Town Landmarks Preservation Commission, Wines said he does not know exactly when Wegert’s opened. “I just know it was there when I started at the Northville School in 1952,” he said. The school is located next to the grocery.

The grocery changed hands in 2011, purchased by Mualla Ergulec, a longtime North Fork summer resident, who rebranded it as the Sound Avenue Grocery Store. 

When it reopens as Bread and Butter next month, the store will still be the only grocery within five miles in any direction, DiMenna said. 

DiMenna navigated around fixtures, shelving and power tools for a tour of the place Wednesday afternoon, as a construction crew worked on site. She borrows a phrase her daughter Tess uses to describe the project:  “a love letter to the North Fork.” 

She said she fell in love with the North Fork and moved to Riverhead with her daughters two years ago. She bought a large tract of farmland. Her daughter Claire, 20, operates an animal sanctuary called Critterville on 10 acres there. The rest is being leased to a local farmer, DiMenna said. Her daughter Tess, 23, is her partner on the Bread and Butter project.

DiMenna, who owns a theatrical production company, describes herself as a serial entrepreneur, but her vision for her new business venture is deeply rooted in the community she’s come to embrace. Her vision for the store is shaped by a broader belief in supporting local agriculture and preserving the region’s farming heritage. She plans to stock the store with locally grown produce, store-made baked goods and freshly made foods. The emphasis throughout is on fresh, seasonal food — lighter fare in the summer, with soups, stews and heartier comfort dishes in the colder months — all designed for takeout, as the property’s zoning does not allow for sit-down dining.

Some of the produce will come directly from DiMenna’s own Riverhead farm. Other goods will be sourced from neighboring farms and growers across the North Fork.

“When you buy lettuce here, you’re going to know who grew that head of lettuce,” she said.

The goal, she added, is not to compete with local farm stands, but to complement them — bringing together products from across the region in one place.

“We can pull everything from all the farm stands into one location,” she said. “People don’t have to drive to 10 different places to get what they need.” 

In addition to locally grown produce and food made on premises, the store will carry an assortment of grocery staples — not an overwhelming selection, she said, but “a little bit of everything” a customer may need. “If you ran out of shampoo at home and you don’t want to run all the way to Target, we’ve got you,” she said.

DiMenna is also planning ready-to-go picnic baskets, stocked with breads, cheeses and prepared foods, designed for beach days, vineyard visits or backyard gatherings.

“We really want this to be a hub for this community,” she said. 

“If we do that right, that becomes our year-round base,” she said, which she expects will be augmented by seasonal residents and visitors. She’s quick to stress that she doesn’t see a “them and us” divide in the population between full-time and part-time residents. “We all need each other.”

That philosophy extends to the business itself. “I don’t care if you have local plates or not,” she said. “I just want people to feel welcome and feel like this is for everybody.”

The adjoining & Bottle shop will follow a similar philosophy, featuring a curated selection of wines, spirits and small-batch products, with a rotating spotlight on local vineyards.

For a building that has long held a place in the community’s collective memory, she said, the opportunity comes with a sense of responsibility.

“To be trusted with something that has this much history,” she said, “that really means a lot to us.”