Spearheaded by Irena Angeliades, who’s already opened locations in Huntington and East Northport, that barn you like is about to come back in style.
Patchogue’s Dairy Barn — a South Shore-based store synonymous with the Long Island staple of suburban chains offering milk, bread, eggs, and more — is set to reopen this week. As of November 10th, The Barn is officially back in business.
The red-and-white drive-thru experience has been sorely missed, as one Dairy Barn after another either converted to a Red Acre Farm or was boarded up entirely. The absence was especially felt during the COVID pandemic, when shoppers sought limited contact with others while purchasing essential fridge items.
The quaint simplicity of decades’ worth of dependable Dairy Barn service was eventually pushed out by supermarket expansion and the home-delivery app boom. With multiple 7-Elevens on every major street these days, the act of grabbing milk — or even cigarettes — has grown more monotonous than it ought to be. Whatever happened to the adventure through the time portal? Whatever happened to The Dairy Barn?
Per online yearning and the aforementioned discontent of the masses, the tides have begun to shift of late — as evidenced by our regular coverage of big-store closures and small-store celebrations.
According to local reports, Angeliades and her team expect five Barns to be open and operating across Long Island by year’s end, and 10 by the spring of 2026.
Here’s to good tidings ahead for The Dairy Barn, as it appears destined to live out many more days.
And here’s to a holiday season where you can enjoy a store-signature s’mores latte while watching the big Michael Cera scene in the seasonally appropriate, St. James-shot “Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point” — now streaming on Amazon — reminding us that The Dairy Barn isn’t just nostalgic.
It’s timeless.