East End Business Book: Whole Foods Coming to Hamptons

Our East End Report, a wrap-up of the week's news from Greenport to Riverhead to Montauk, recaps each Patch site's most compelling story. Below, we bring your our weekly business wrap-up, so you're in the know on which businesses are coming and going in the area. 

Let us know if you have any news tips you'd like to see reported by emailing your local Patch editor. And for the small business owners out there, one way to market your business is by 

NORTH FORK

Online grocer, Fresh Direct, is touting fresh vegetables from area farmers. North Fork visitors who live in New York City have the opportunity to have fresh East End produce delivered right to their homes. Fresh Direct, has spent the last two years growing its inventory of North Fork grown produce to satisfy the demands of its clientele. Fresh Direct, which has no physical stores, delivers groceries to New York City and the surrounding areas.

Emma Frelingheysen, director of front of store merchandising for Fresh Direct, said to stay within the company's policy of selling high quality, perishable foods they wanted to develop partnerships with a number of North Fork farms to sell in season products. Currently, Fresh Direct is working with Satur Farms in Cutchogue, Wickam's Fruit Farm in Cutchogue, Latham Farm in Orient, Lyle Wells of Wells Farms in Aquebogue and Fox Hollow Farms in Baiting Hollow.

SOUTHAMPTON

Dan Gerstl of "Drink This" interviews brewer and sales manager Spencer Niebuhr of  at the second annual Great International Beer Expo on Feb. 4 at the Meadowlands Expo Center. Niebuhr talks about the Publick House's popular Double White, a Belgian witbier.

WESTHAMPTON-HAMPTON BAYS

The will open for the season at 9 a.m. on May 5, according to the , which runs the market.

Victoria Hedberg Kingwell, market manager said Tuesday afternoon that the opening will be marked with a vine cutting ceremony in which village and chamber officials will attend.

The opening will also feature music by Grant Werner of the group, The Boomers.

EAST HAMPTON

Health food consumers, rejoice; Whole Foods is coming to town. 

While the commitment so far is only seasonal, the natural and organic grocery store chain confirmed this week that it is opening a "Whole Foods Market Farm Stand," a pop-up venue, according to spokesman Michael Sinatra. 

The location, the former Plitt Ford dealership at 368 Montauk Highway, has long been a place that Whole Foods has been suggested for. Gregg Saunders, a retail and shopping center developer who lives in Sagaponack, owns several shopping centers where Whole Foods have been located and has expressed his desire see such a store, like Traders Joes, open there.

RIVERHEAD

If Norm Peterson, a fixture who stopped in regularly to raise a pint on the popular television series “Cheers,” were a real person, odds are he’d feel right at home bellying up to the bar atin Jamesport.

Cliff’s Elbow Room, a mainstay in the community since 1958, is, as the old “Cheers” theme song goes, a restaurant where everybody knows your name.