After four years as an online-only farmers market, Centre Markets now has a storefront.
The local food hub held a grand opening on Wednesday for its new store in the Nittany Mall, where it offers food, beverages and more from among its nearly 50 vendors, which will also continue to be available for online ordering.
Sabine Carey founded Centre Markets in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to provide a convenient platform for local farmers and producers and the community to stay connected. Since then, it has grown, and while Centre Markets is working on a larger project to open a retail store in Pine Grove Mills later this year, Carey found an opportunity to get started with brick-and-mortar retail at the mall.
“I was originally just thinking about using the mall to host our online order pickups,” Carey said. “But then when I realized the scope of the space we were renting, it only made sense that if I’m at the mall I’m going to open a retail store. It’s just been really amazing. Everybody says there’s nobody at the mall, but there are so many people that are here on a regular basis, like from the Senior Center, people walking, there’s people coming to Holiday Hair.
“We’re in a good location where there are actually people and we’ve had such an amazing response from folks just sticking their head in the door and wanting to know what we’re doing. They’re excited that there’s not only a small local business coming into the mall, but that we’re bringing healthy food, and it’s not just us as a small business. We’re supporting 50 other small businesses under our roof.”
That’s reflected in the diversity of the products on offer at the store. The crowd that turned out for Wednesday’s grand opening could find locally farmed and produced meat, dairy, produce, baked goods, flowers, coffee and more.
With a variety of vendors participating in Centre Markets, and the seasonality of locally produced food, offerings will change, giving patrons something new to find on a regular basis.
“The nice thing is we can be very flexible as far as seasonality goes, because crops are seasonal,” Carey said. “There are some folks that will just grow tomatoes for us. We’ll have somebody else that specializes in mushrooms, so right now we have all these mushrooms, but come summer it will be too hot and dry. It’s going to be a seasonal rotation of vendors.”
Centre Markets provides an important role in the local food economy, according to Centre County Board of Commissioners Chair Mark Higgins.
The county has about 1,000 farms and 2,000 small businesses, but only about 2% of the food consumed here is made in Centre County, Higgins said.
“Centre Markets and initiatives like this are tremendous,” he said. “It’s helping our local farmers. It’s helping our small businesses. It’s raising our quality of life.”
Supporting local growers is vital to both preserving farmland and healthy eating habits, added Board of Commissioners Vice-Chair Amber Concepcion.
“It’s so exciting to see a storefront like this opening here to support local agriculture,” Concepcion said. “Part of preserving our farmland is ensuring we are supporting our local farms, buying from our local farms, so that they can stay in business and continue farming and preserving our land for future generations…. You’re going to find that you’re eating a lot more healthfully, naturally, by focusing on that kind of seasonal eating. This is a great opportunity to get in those healthy habits. It’s going to be really wonderful to support all of our local farms by having this one convenient stop here.”
The store also adds to the Happy Valley Adventure Bureau’s agritourism initiative to attract visitors to the county’s many agricultural-related destinations.
Centre Markets is the latest among more than 60 Happy Valley Agventure destinations, a venture started in 2019 by the HVAB and Chamber of Business and Industry of Centre County, and the newest stop on the Fresh from the Field digital passport trail launched earlier this year.
“We’re thrilled that Centre Markets has a storefront,” said Lesley Kistner, HVAB public relations director. “It’s a wonderful way to connect even more people with fresh, healthy food.”
Centre Markets plans to grow further with its retail store at 112 W. Pine Grove Rd. in Pine Grove Mills, which Carey hopes will open this summer.
Whether the Nittany Mall store remains open after the Pine Grove Mills location launches remains to be determined.
“[The mall store] is giving us training wheels for our bigger project in Pine Grove Mills,” she said. “We are open to responding to what the public wants. We’re definitely proceeding with Pine Grove Mills. If the demand at the mall is such that we can justify having both locations, I’m all for it.”
The Pine Grove Mills location will be a collaboration with the nonprofit Centre Kitchen Collective, which was founded by Carey and Webster’s Bookstore Cafe owner Elaine Meder-Wilgus. The building will house a Centre Markets retail store as well Centre Kitchen Collective’s incubator commercial kitchen for food entrepreneurs.
It will also provide support and training for small businesses.
“We work with a lot of small-scale producers or food entrepreneurs that need guidance on labeling and food safety training, so we’re going to take the lead in that for all the people that we work with,” Carey said. “A lot of times, we’re the first point of contact for small businesses that want to start a food venture and they come to us. So we’ll be able to more formally help them.”
The retail store and business support will open first, while Centre Kitchen Collective continues to work on grant funding for the commercial kitchen, Carey explained.
Centre Markets’ Nittany Mall store is located just inside entrance B, near Holiday Hair, T-Mobile and AT&T. It is open noon to 6 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and 1 to 4 p.m. on Sunday.
Online orders are available for pickup on Saturdays at the mall location and for delivery in State College, Boalsburg, Lemont and Pine Grove Mills.
“People can come on their lunch break or after work or Sunday afternoon, and then we’re still open for our online orders,” Carey said. “So, plenty of opportunities.”
