"I am so glad to be back. It is so nice here," James Kim told the Rye Record this week, standing in a former TD Bank building at 42 Purchase Street. "So expensive, but so nice."
Kim's café, RéUnion Bakery & Coffee, has been open on a soft basis. As of the Rye Record's October 4 report, he expected the official opening by the end of this week. He said the key to success is giving people a place to gather. He also named the competition: maman, Sunshine Coffee Roasters, Winfield Street Coffee, The Granola Bar, Le Pain Quotidien and Starbucks. Those are seven coffee counters in a downtown the Rye Record measured at about a quarter mile long. A year ago the same paper counted eight places selling barista drinks there and asked whether New York's smallest city could support that many.
Since then, two big cafés have opened and one small one has closed. The newcomers aren't selling a different cup of coffee. They are selling more room to sit.
The Biggest Room on Purchase Street
RéUnion is now downtown Rye's largest café. It is approved to seat 84 people. The building still shows its bank history: the old walk-in safe has been turned into restrooms. The kitchen sits at one end of the room, where you can watch pastry chef Alexis Grea's team bake. A coffee roasting room sits at the other end, also in public view. The counter has held pain au chocolat, raspberry croissant tartelettes and a flat savory pastry with ham and Comté. Kim says the menu is set up for lingering, with breakfast, coffee, lunch and soft-serve ice cream from early morning to late afternoon.
There is local history behind the building, too. Kim's parents opened Belle Cleaners in Rye in 1984 and grew it to five more locations in Westchester and Fairfield County. The family sold the business in the early 2000s but kept property on Purchase Street. Kim has said he hopes RéUnion can grow into a chain the same way.
Two blocks up, maman opened at 64 Purchase Street on Thursday, July 23, 2026, in the former Snackery space. It was the chain's first Westchester café. Its menu covers more than coffee and pastries, with made-to-order salads, wraps, sandwiches and soups.
What Each Café Is Offering
Counted by seats, parking and hours rather than by what goes in the cup, the downtown cafés look like this. Seat counts come from Rye Record reporting. Hours come from each business's own site where it publishes them. Blank cells mean no source we found gave the number.
| Café | Address | In Rye since | Seats reported | Published hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starbucks | 51 Purchase St. | 1994 | — | — |
| Le Pain Quotidien | 30 Purchase St. | 2009 | Communal tables, benches | 7 a.m.–5 p.m. daily |
| The Granola Bar | 96 Purchase St. | 2017 | 50 | Weekdays 7 a.m.–4 p.m., weekends 8 a.m.–4 p.m. |
| Sunshine Coffee Roasters | Purdy Ave. | 2024 | 30 | — |
| Winfield Street Coffee | 2 Station Plaza | 2025 | 55 | Mon–Fri 6 a.m.–7 p.m., Sat 8 a.m.–7 p.m., Sun 8 a.m.–2 p.m. |
| maman | 64 Purchase St. | July 2026 | — | Weekdays 7:30 a.m.–6 p.m., weekends 8 a.m.–6 p.m. |
| RéUnion Bakery & Coffee | 42 Purchase St. | Soft-open, Oct. 2026 | 84 | Early morning to late afternoon |
The table shows that each café holds a different kind of space.
Winfield Street Coffee took over the long-empty ticket office in the old Rye train station after seven years of talks with the MTA. It filled the room with 55 seats, couches, shelves of books and an original mural. As part of the deal, the MTA gave Winfield 20 dedicated parking spaces next door, which the Rye Record called "a major coup in parking-starved Rye." Its 6 a.m. weekday opening is the earliest among the cafés with published hours.
Sunshine Coffee Roasters on Purdy Avenue focuses on coffee more than any café except Starbucks. Co-owner Mike Contopoulos calls it "a premium coffee shop — a true third space between home and work." Regulars told the Rye Record, "They know people by name and what they drink." Sunshine's other location is in Larchmont.
The Granola Bar serves breakfast, brunch and lunch in a 50-seat dining room, so coffee is only part of what it sells. Le Pain Quotidien has been at 30 Purchase Street since 2009, with communal tables and bench seating. Starbucks relies on pickup. In 2025 the Rye Record reported that a dozen or more people lined up at 7 a.m. on an average weekday to collect orders placed on the app. The paper also noted that Starbucks nationally is adding more comfortable seating and better food to get people to stay longer.
The Crêperie on Purdy Avenue
La Petite Bretagne opened at 3 Purdy Avenue in early September 2025. It served crêpes, espresso and gelato, and its early hours ran until 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 10 p.m. on weekends.
In its October 4 report, the Rye Record said the shop had closed the week before. The owner told the paper it had been breaking even. With well-funded competitors such as maman arriving, the owner decided it wasn't worth keeping open. He still runs the original La Petite Bretagne in Mamaroneck.
Rye has seen this before. Purchase Street got its first espresso bar, The Coffee Tree, in April 1994. Two months later Starbucks opened directly across the street, and The Coffee Tree closed within months. More than thirty years later, a single block can still support only so many coffee counters, and new ones keep arriving anyway.
Planning a Coffee Stop This Month
With the published hours and seat counts side by side, here is which café fits which part of the day:
- Before 7 a.m. on a weekday: Winfield Street Coffee at the station opens at 6. It is also the only one with dedicated parking.
- A mid-morning meeting with a laptop: RéUnion's 84 seats or Winfield's 55 make these the largest rooms, and Sunshine's 30 seats are on quieter Purdy Avenue.
- Lunch with your coffee: The Granola Bar, a breakfast, brunch and lunch restaurant, is open until 4 p.m. maman's kitchen serves from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., though the café stays open until 6.
- After 6 p.m. on a weekday: Among the cafés with published hours, only Winfield is still open, until 7 p.m.
- Sunday afternoon: Winfield closes at 2 p.m. on Sundays, while Le Pain Quotidien and maman stay open later.
The Rye Farmers Market also runs Sundays through November 22, from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Theo Fremd Avenue lot behind downtown, a short walk from every café on Purchase Street.
The Storefronts Around the Cafés
The cafés are just one part of the turnover on these blocks. Framebridge opened at 27 Purchase Street on September 12 in the former Gentlemen's Grooming Lounge space, and its gallery includes a felt Rye Beach pennant. Aly & Joshua closed its store at 8 Purdy Avenue after 22 months but still sells online.
The bigger changes on Purdy Avenue may be at street level later. Construction restarted in September at 11–15 Purdy Avenue, where the building that held The Town Dock restaurant was torn down last December. The developer, MM Real Estate Partners, found underground water on the site and redesigned the project without a basement. The plan is eight apartments over street-level stores. An application to redevelop the corner of Purdy Avenue and Purchase Street, including the former Aly & Joshua space, is on hold under the city's moratorium on downtown commercial development.
Through October, the Rye Arts Center's Art for Purchase exhibition is showing local and regional art in downtown shop windows. It runs through October 29. A related Art for Design panel takes place Thursday, October 8, from 6:30 to 7:15 p.m. at Rafele Rye, 26 Purchase Street.
Our team keeps track of what opens, closes and changes on Purchase Street and Purdy Avenue, because those blocks shape daily life for anyone who owns a home near them. If you live in Rye and want to know how this year's downtown changes fit into your own plans, Gino Bello Homes is happy to talk it through. Request a free home valuation and market consultation, and bring your questions about the street you live on.
