East End Business Book: Wine Industry Opposes 'Sweeping' Legislation

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 

SOUTHAMPTON

If you don't live in Southampton Village, parking at  can run you as much as $40 per day or $350 for the season, but a new shuttle service offered by village natives will drop you off and pick you up at Coopers this summer for a price that's much easier to swallow: Free.

As lifeguards go on duty at 9 a.m. Saturday, Chris and Stacy Dimon, the husband-and-wife founders of SpotRides, will offer their first free ride to the beach. It starts on Main Street and goes on a 6-mile loop, taking approximately 20 to 30 minutes. The shuttle will operate from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. seven days a week, at least until two weeks after Labor Day, Stacy Dimon said. On weekends, the shuttle will hit the streets again in the evening, to offer rides between village restaurants and hotspots.

The shuttle is a neighborhood electric vehicle, or NEV, Dimon explained. “It is a 100 percent electric vehicle, and we’re actually planning on adding solar panels that will keep it charged up a little longer, so it’s very green, very environmentally friendly.”

WESTHAMPTON-HAMPTON BAYS

Shopkeepers Ready for Summer Influx; Predict Hot Sellers

For the past month, Westhampton Beach Main Street shop owners have been busy stocking their stores for the season, making sure that they will have the hottest items on their shelves. All say they are ready and expecting a great summer season — and Memorial Day weekend, which is expected to bring sunny skies. Find out what's hot this season on Main Street in Westhampton Beach.

EAST HAMPTON

Whole Foods is  for business on the South Fork. 

On a rainy Tuesday morning, the gourmet grocery store unlocked the doors to its first-ever, at the western edge of the Town of East Hampton, right in time for Memorial Day weekend.

The 7,000-square-foot pop-up shop, inside the former Plitt Ford dealership and garage at 368 Montauk Highway, is the grocery giant's store furthest east on Long Island.

RIVERHEAD

A popular program that provides fresh fruit and vegetables to the Flanders community will be back for a second season -- and has won a state grant to fund operations.

The Flanders Farm Fresh Food Market recently won a $10,000 grant from New York's FreshConnect program, which aims to provide produce to low income or underserved areas.

NORTH FORK

To many working in the North Fork Wine industry, the text in proposed changes to a law regarding special events regulations in  are simply flawed.

About 25 people spoke out against the proposed change at a Southold Town Board public hearing Tuesday afternoon. According to Town Attorney Martin Finnegan the changes the code committee had worked on over the last few weeks are not “meant to police or regulate every event ever contemplated,” he told board members during a work session earlier that day.