From the outside, the building on Route 1 in Salisbury looks like the vintage car dealership it once was, with its low-pitched roof and towering front windows. On the inside, it looks like an independent grocery market, replete with colorful fruits and veggies, coolers of milk, and plentiful dry goods. What this building really houses, however, is something much bigger: a facility that is aiming to eradicate food insecurity in the lower Merrimack Valley.
The operation, spearheaded by nonprofit Our Neighbors’ Table, includes a free grocery store for area residents in need, as well as expansive storage and refrigeration areas that allow partner food pantries throughout the region to obtain and store more fresh food, more efficiently.
“It is really transforming the way we operate,” says the organization’s executive director Lyndsey Haight.
Our Neighbors’ Table began in 1992 when members of an Amesbury church started a weekly community meal to provide food and companionship to fellow parishioners. Eight people attended the first dinner. From there, the services slowly grew over the years, still operating out of a spare room in the church. Haight joined the organization in 2010, and laid a plan for expanding the organization’s work.
In 2016, the group opened its first market in Amesbury, finally moving out of the church and into its own space. The space was designed to defy the stereotypes of a traditional food pantry: The shelves are reliably stocked with a consistent variety of fresh foods and staples, the atmosphere is bright and welcoming, and the experience feels just like shopping in a small grocery store. Shoppers scan their membership card, then stroll through the aisles, selecting what they need and bagging their food as they go.
“We’re not policing what they can or can’t take,” Haight says. “They’re not limited.”
The idea, she says, was to reduce the stigma that can be associated with seeking food assistance and preserve the dignity of those who come for help. She also wanted to keep a steady, reliable stream of food to ensure guests—the organization’s preferred word for its clients—can count on receiving the food they need at a time when food insecurity is skyrocketing.
Roughly one-third of Massachusetts households are at risk of running out of food each month, according to the Greater Boston Food Bank—a significant escalation in need since 2019, when food insecurity affected 19 percent of households.
“Coming to a local food program has become a critical component of people keeping their households afloat,” Haight says.
And the Our Neighbors’ Table approach is working. The organization conducts regular surveys to gauge food insecurity levels in its service area and, since 2018, has been able to declare Amesbury hunger-free.
However, when the COVID pandemic struck in 2020, sparking a new tidal wave of need, the group was galvanized to pursue ways to extend its reach through collective action with other food insecurity organizations. It closed on the Salisbury building in 2022, and began renovations on what was to become the Seacoast Regional Food Hub.
In March 2024, the facility began receiving shipments from the Greater Boston Food Bank, allowing smaller area food pantries to pick up their inventory in Salisbury, rather than driving all the way to Boston. In June, the second free market opened in the front of the building. In September, 15 local food security organizations were able to start storing their supplies there, allowing them to keep more food on hand more reliably.
“The shared infrastructure gives them those tools that they need so that they can improve their food supply,” Haight says.
More collaborative efforts are on the way. Our Neighbors’ Table already works with food producers and wholesalers that have extra food to get this inventory—some 300,000 pounds per year—on the shelves at the Amesbury and Salisbury markets. Later this year, it will ramp up this work by taking in even more food and distributing it through its partner organizations as well.
“By the end of 2026 we’ll get at least 1 million pounds of food that’s currently going into landfills into the food safety net,” Haight says.
These ambitious undertakings are being funded through collective fundraising efforts by the partner organizations. Thus far, they’ve raised $5 million of their $7.5 million target. But, while the scale of the work has expanded since the days of the first community meal in the church, the mission is very much the same, Haight says.
“Where we are today is just a continuous evolution of that spirit of neighbors helping neighbors.”