A new local food hub is set to resurrect grocery shopping at the former Mustard Seed Co-op location in downtown Hamilton on the weekend.
Strathcona Market will make its debut at 460 York Blvd. on Saturday and will be the operations base for Dundurn Market’s popular food delivery program.
In a social media post, co-founder Justin Abbiss and members of the Dundurn team revealed the launch for 8 a.m. months after the founders of the Mustard Seed approached them with a plan to salvage the food market.
“We had a look at it and it actually fits quite well with what we’re doing, and particularly with our home delivery program that is really quite busy,” Abbiss told Global News in an October interview.
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Dundurn Market serves between 200 and 400 people every week, and Abbiss said the operation has been encroaching upon the actual market space at the Dundurn location.
The new hub will continue the tradition of offering locally-sourced products the Mustard Seed used to provide.
“We already work with a lot of the same vendors and the great thing about this is we’re going to be able to work with two or three times more vendors because we’ll just have that additional space that we don’t have at Dundurn Market or Ottawa Market.”
Abbiss and company also run the Ottawa Market in the city’s east end.
Hours for the new Strathcona Market this coming weekend will be Saturday 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday.
The board of directors of Hamilton’s Mustard Seed said goodbye to hundreds of members in August amid bankruptcy proceedings.
Former directors cited the pandemic and a change in shopping behaviours as part of a recent cash shortfall that saw the entity’s unsecured liabilities exceed assets by well over $300,000.