A Pharmacy, a Starbucks and a Beer License: What Target Brings to the South Fork

On Friday, September 11, Target Corporation filed an application with the New York State Liquor Authority for its Bridgehampton store. The filing is for the license a grocery store needs to sell beer to take home, and it names the store as Target Store T-3398 at 2102 Montauk Highway, Building 4, Unit A. The state's records show the application as intake complete.

That filing is a small piece of paper. What it confirms is not small. Target's own pages now describe the Bridgehampton store as a full format location, and the company lists it as hiring. For anyone running a business on the South Fork, the question is no longer whether Target is coming. It is which of your categories it will compete in, and whose staff it will hire.

We covered the building's long retail history in August. This piece is about what goes inside it.

What the store will sell

Target's list of upcoming stores places the Bridgehampton location at 2044 Montauk Highway, the address of Bridgehampton Commons, at roughly 90,000 square feet. The Commons' own site, run by Kimco Realty, lists Target as coming soon.

The store's page on Target's website, under store number 3398, sets out what that space will hold. It lists hours for a Starbucks, for a CVS pharmacy, and for beer, along with a separate pickup service for adult beverages. It lists Drive Up, Order Pickup and Same Day Delivery. The same page shows the store as closed on every date through September 21, which is consistent with a store still being fitted out.

Put those together and the picture is a general merchandise store that also fills prescriptions, pours coffee, sells beer, and delivers to the house the same day. Each of those is a category that independent South Fork businesses already serve, mostly at higher price points and with more personal service.

Who sells the same things

A big box opening is usually discussed in terms of the stores in the same shopping center. The more exposed businesses here are spread along Montauk Highway and the villages on either side of it.

An independent pharmacy now faces a CVS counter inside a store where the customer is already buying paper towels and school supplies. A deli or convenience store whose beer cooler carries a meaningful share of its margin now faces a national chain selling beer in the same trip as groceries. A coffee shop faces a Starbucks with its own parking lot.

Same Day Delivery and Drive Up matter as much as the store itself. They extend the store's reach to households that would not otherwise make the trip, which is where a local shop's convenience advantage has lived.

The hiring question

Target's careers site lists Bridgehampton among its fall 2026 new stores and marks it as now hiring. A store with a pharmacy, a cafe, a grocery section and online order fulfillment needs a large hourly staff, and it is recruiting in September.

That timing lands on the South Fork at an awkward moment for everyone else. The summer economy has been running on seasonal help, and the workers who stay through the fall are the ones every year-round employer wants to keep. A national retailer offering steady year-round hours is a direct competitor for exactly those people, whether the employer is a retailer, a restaurant, a landscaper or a property manager.

What it means for members

If you employ hourly staff on the South Fork, talk to the people you want to keep through the winter this month, before Target finishes staffing the store. Year-round hours and a clear raise date cost less than rehiring in the spring.

If you run a shop that sells beer, over-the-counter medicine, coffee or household basics anywhere from Southampton to East Hampton, decide now which products you will defend on price and which you will defend on service, delivery or specialty range. Trying to match a national chain across the whole shelf is the expensive way to learn which customers were only there for convenience.