Riverhead farmers market to reopen Saturday in its new Main Road location

East End Food Institute’s indoor farmers market will reopen Saturday in its new location, the former Homeside Florist and Greenhouses site on Main Road and Route 105 in Riverhead.

The market, now called the East End Food Market, will be open on Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., through April 30.

The 5,000-square-foot building has space for 45 vendors, according to East End Food Institute’s Executive Director Kate Fullam.

Visitors can expect to see both familiar and new faces in the vendor booths at the farmers market when it opens its doors Saturday morning. Many of vendors who’ve participated in the farmers market downtown over the years are returning, including Sang Lee Farms, Browder’s Birds, Mecox Dairy, Peconic River Herb Farm and Blue Duck Bakery. There will also be new faces in the new location, which offers vendors permanent spaces and storage capacity.

In addition to fresh local food offerings, the market will host wine tastings from a rotating list of wineries sponsored by Long Island Wine Country, educational opportunities from area nonprofits, craft and local art vendors and live music.

Customers can pre-order local goods at shop.eastendfood.org and pick up at the market every weekend, or shop in person.

East End Food Market will also accept SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) and Double Up Food Bucks, a program new for Suffolk County that is designed to help SNAP-enrolled customers stretch their dollars to purchase fresh, locally grown food.

The location is centrally located and easily accessible from both forks, there’s plenty of parking and the building also offers easy access for vendors delivering their wares.

Riverhead’s indoor farmers market was first launched in February 2014 as a project of the Riverhead Business Improvement District Management Association and was an instant success. It moved among three different long-vacant vacant buildings on East Main Street. The BID pulled out of the endeavor in 2017, citing rent expenses and net losses. That year, LI Greenmarket stepped in to operate the market. East End Food Institute took it over in 2019, opening in the former Ben Franklin Crafts (later the Red Collection consignment shop) building.

Toward the end of the institute’s first season operating the market, COVID-19 struck.

“When the pandemic hit we pivoted towards a virtual market so we could do home delivery and helped a lot of local vendors that way,” Fullam said.

The new location, where East End Food Institute has signed a three-year lease, offers not just the space for a retail market, but potential for a lot of other activities and programs that the organization is anxious to launch or grow. Among the possibilities is a midweek wholesale market during the summer season, “where restaurant chefs can come to see, taste, and talk,” she said.

The four-acre site also has room for expansion. Fullam said in an interview last month East End Food Institute is mulling a 7,500-square-foot processing and production facility and incubator that could be built perpendicular to the existing building. It will be similar to what the food institute currently has at its location on the Stony Brook Southampton campus.

East End Food Market’s new address is 139 Main Road. For information about vendors and offerings at the new location, visit the market’s Facebook page and East End Food Institute’s website.