As businesses were closing their doors down due to the pandemic, Maker To Main in Worcester was just getting up and running. 

"We opened on February 21st of this year which was essentially 3 weeks before the pandemic shut everything down. Everything shut down around us except for us."

The store is an evolution of "lettuce be local food hub," whose mission was to aggregate food from local farms to restaurants, breweries, farm to farm aggregation and some schools and small businesses.

Owner, Lynn Cheney decided to launch a brick and motor location to bring these products to the average shopper. 

"The majority of our store, 95 percent of our store is locally sources. We have the highest quality produce of whats in season and direct from our farmers. We work with a vast majority of different growers and makers, hense the name maker to main. We are bringing all of these locally makers and the products they create to main street."

Cheney says they have about 150 farms, growers and makers in their network. 

She says there are many benefits to eating and buying locally.

"The nutritional content is higher you are getting increased nutrition by eating product and produce and food that was picked at its peak freshness. Versus something that was picked green and then sat on truck or was shipped somewhere in the world. We also didn't run into the problems that big box stores had where their shelves were cleaned and there was nothing on them because they are relying on a global food system and huge trucking and transportation that came to a screetching halt. We didn't run into that problem. We never once ran out of toilet paper, flour none of these things that people were desperately seeking. We didn't have that problem, we still don't have that problem."