Maker to Main is a full service market, located at 328 Main Street in Worcester, that works to bring ingredients and goods by local makers and farmers within the Massachusetts and New England communities to market.

Originally launched in 2012 and called Lettuce Be Local, the organization was formed as a  connection between farmers and restaurants, breweries, and other farms. Maker to Main now bridges the gap between growers and the everyday consumer in hopes to improve the regional food system through accessibility for area residents and a sales platform for local producers.

“We’ve been aggregating local food for almost a decade now,” said CEO Lynn Cheney. “Especially after delivering to chefs for so long, we quickly realized that a lot of people do not have access to the knowledge and the ingredients that I had from local farms for their own personal homes. I thought the simplest way to open that to everybody was to open a retail market.”

Maker to Main opened three weeks before the COVID-19 shut down in 2020. Cheney said she wanted to help farmers’ products to be more accessible to a broader community, especially as they are in an industry that is so disenfranchised. 

“I recognized a long time ago that farmers are some of the most incredible people I’ve met in my life,” Cheney said. “They will survive no matter what it takes. I thought those qualities were so admirable.”

Cheney started with a beat up truck, which is homaged to in the store as a piece that holds vegetables. She delivered food nine and a half years ago to one chef. Today, there’s a little over 150 makers and growers within a 100 mile radius–including the occasional exception–that are in Cheney’s network now.

“The majority of our products are from Massachusetts,” Cheney said. “We reach out to the other New England states and sometimes to New York as well.”

Now, during the pandemic, Cheney said that she wants her work to also help alleviate food insecurity within the community. Within Worcester roughly ten percent of people are food insecure, and the pandemic has heightened not only the visibility of this but the amount of people going hungry.

United Way set up an initiative with Maker to Main, called Farm to Market to Pantry to Table, to provide fresh, locally grown produce to shelters and ensure that everyone has the healthy and nutritious food they need. Maker to Main provides food each month to El Buen Samaritano Food Program Inc., which is located at 39 Piedmont Street. 

Cheney mentioned a workshop that El Buen Samaritano was putting on to provide kids with more nutritious meals for school lunches as well as  teach parents that may not have the knowledge to have access and afford better food and also know what to do with certain ingredients.

“There’s such a diverse ethnicity within the city itself that there’s some things that they don’t know what to do or how to use,” Cheney said. “That’s across all ethnical backgrounds. My staff in some case, I have to teach them what things are. Stuff that is grown locally is very different from what you’d see at a traditional supermarket.”

But Cheney wants to be able to still bring those products to the local Worcester community. She believes that the product is important for everyone and anyone to have access to.

“I can’t imagine it not being important to somebody,” Cheney said. “What could possibly be more important than that? People being able to have access to food that is not a twinkie that’s a nutritional source for them, there’s nothing else more important than that. Accessibility to food is equally as important to shelter.”

In addition to serving the pantry, Cheney said that Maker to Main has a program where people earn 5 percent back for future purchases for each dollar they spend. People can apply that to each purchase or save up for later. There is also the choice to donate the points, which Cheney and her team will procure in food to donate to El Buen Samaritano.

“Even without funding through United Way, we’re still trying to find a way to bring the best quality food to the food pantry every month, regardless,” Cheney said.

Cheney said that the store’s purpose is to serve all aspects of the community. There are people that utilize her store daily or weekly.

“That’s the whole point, to give them access to walkable groceries, and for that to be the best possible groceries that you can have,” Cheney said.

Cheney said that the storefront also serves as a place for people to convene. She said they know weekly customers by name and a bit of their story.

“If we haven’t seen somebody in a while, we will just send out a message to each other saying ‘Hey I haven’t seen so-and-so’ and another person can chime in,” Cheney said. “It has been enormously helpful because during a time at the very beginning of a pandemic, we’re so concerned about the wellbeing of some of our customers, whether they got sick or needed help. It became a real cause for us, and we still feel that way.”

Cheney mentioned that a weekly customer who lived above the store recently passed away. She said everyone at the store was heartbroken. The man would stand outside of the store with them each day and just talk.

“I think that’s what it’s about – that connection you have with real people,” Cheney said. “You have the ability to impact someone’s life in a positive way with every time that they come into the store.”

Cheney, who won the 2015 Woman in Action Inc. Award, said that it doesn’t matter if a person is just coming in for a beverage or one apple to their whole weekly grocery list. Each person is able to have an interaction with her, and they can impact each other.

“That is Worcester,” Cheney said. “I’ve been here my whole life…and for a large city, we’re a small town feel. We all look out for each other and help each other out in a way that’s just trying to be a better person. There’s no place in the world that’s like Worcester.”

The store is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday and until 3 p.m. on Sundays.