SALEM — There’s a new food market in town, and it couldn’t come at a better time.

Salem Pantry celebrated the launch of “The Market,” its first fully functional brick-and-mortar location over the weekend. The new pantry location, taking up the first floor of North Shore CDC’s Lighthouses building at 47 Leavitt St., is now open five days a week.

The Market brings the Pantry’s offerings into a permanent space at the heart of The Point’s cultural center. It’s surrounded by Palmer Cove Park and the Saltonstall School, across the street from property previously serving Plummer Youth Promise, and just a block from Espacio, North Shore CDC’s community center on Congress Street.

It’s also coming as conversations about The Point Neighborhood’s status as a food desert still creeps into conversations about equity. With prior chatter suggesting a supermarket could open at Shetland Park, it has been regularly noted that the closest source for groceries to The Point is Crosby’s Market on Canal Street, far outside The Point.

“It’s going to be a new location open five days a week. It’ll feature evening and weekend hours, and it’s going to provide a much more stable environment for someone who’s looking for food,” said Robyn Burns, executive director of the Pantry. “Everything will still be free like it is now, and we’re really excited because much of what we’ve been hearing from people over the past months and years is that people are still trying to figure out what the best fit is for them.”

The Market will run Tuesday through Saturday, with pockets of hours staggered across each day to serve different types of shopping habits.

With early-morning hours on Wednesday and Saturday, the pantry will target afternoons on Tuesday and Friday and run evening hours on Thursday, from 2 to 8 p.m. in that scenario.

“One of the things we really wanted to make sure we did was talk to our current cohort of pantry guests,” Burns said. “We’re going to pilot some hours for the spring, see how that goes and make some adjustments potentially in the coming months.”

But even as the Market opens its doors, there’s a sense that demand is only going to increase as the region’s economy, like all others, continues to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. As the Pantry announced the opening date, it added that a recent cut to COVID-timed SNAP benefits sparked “a rise in the number of people they were serving” at the Pantry. “In March alone, the Salem Pantry served 4,500 unique people,” the organization announced.

For that, the other offerings from the Pantry will remain in place for now, even as the Market shifts where folks get food, according to Burns.

“The mobile market will still continue,” Burns said. “Over the coming months, we’re going to be assessing the mobile market program and trying to figure out... ‘OK, it looks like a lot of people are trying to shift from this other location to the brick and mortar location.’”

Contact Dustin Luca at 978-338-2523 or DLuca@salemnews.com. Follow him at facebook.com/dustinluca or on Twitter @DustinLucaSN.

THE MARKET HOURS

Location: 47 Leavitt St.

Tuesday: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Wednesday: 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Thursday: 2 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Friday: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Saturday: 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Contact Dustin Luca at 978-338-2523 or DLuca@salemnews.com. Follow him at facebook.com/dustinluca or on Twitter @DustinLucaSN.

Contact Dustin Luca at 978-338-2523 or DLuca@salemnews.com. Follow him at facebook.com/dustinluca or on Twitter @DustinLucaSN.

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