East End Food Market kicks off holiday season Nov. 11

The East End Food Market will be ushering in holiday spirit with the opening of their holiday market season this weekend.

Starting on Saturday, Nov. 11, the market located at 139 Main Road in Riverhead will run every Saturday from 9 a.m.–2 p.m. through the end of the year.

It will include over 40 local farm, food, beverage, and craft vendors including Sang Lee Farms, Aki’s Kitchen, Catapano Dairy Farm, Milla’s Puffs, Sweet Woodland Farm and many others.

East End Food Market is a project of the Southampton-based nonprofit, East End Food, which helps connects local farmers and producers with the community to promote sustainable food systems. They have been working on renovating the 5,000 square-foot building which was the former Homeside Florist & Greenhouses, which closed in 2018. The popular winter market opened at the site in November 2021. 

The project is estimated to cost $3 million. As of this July, when they held their groundbreaking to begin construction on the project dubbed East End Food Hub, they had secured over $1.3 million in grants and private donations towards the project. They also recently announced the receipt of a $250,000 grant award. The grant added momentum to their goal to raise $600,000 by the end of the year. They have currently raised $63,820 towards that goal.

Shopping the market provides a great opportunity to get a sneak peek at the construction progress at East End Food Hub. The construction will provide space for a farmers market, demonstration spaces for nutrition education, a shared community kitchen, a food processing area and warehouse as well as cold storage for aggregation and distribution of locally sourced food. Kate Fullam, East End Food’s Executive Director, will host hub tours on select Saturdays in November and December where the community is invited to visit the site and learn about plans for the facility as a center for aggregation, processing and distribution of local food. Those interested can view the full tour schedule and reserve a spot at eastendfood.org/food-hub.

“East End Food Hub is a significant step in our mission to support local farmers and producers and we’re so excited to share what we’ve been working on and invite everyone to be part of our vision for a more sustainable regional food system,” Ms. Fullam said.

For a full list of vendors and more information visit eastendfood.org