Farm-to-grocer food market comes to LIC’s Falchi Building BY ANGELA MATUA Getting farm-fresh products in Long Island City is now easier than ever. The duo behind Good Neighbor Queens, an artisanal farm-to-grocer food market in the Falchi Building, is aiming to provide Queens residents with a variety of produce, meats and dairy from local farms along with workshops and tastings to educate people about the food they consume. Katrina Schultz Richter, founder of the Queens County Market and Tonice Sgrignoli from the Queens Harvest Food Co-op, began brainstorming ideas when they realized that the borough did not have a grocery store with the kind of items they wanted to buy. “We got to know each other by collaborating on those projects and we thought, ‘Why doesn’t Queens have the kind of store where we want to shop?’” Sgrignoli said. Good Neighbor Queens held its soft opening on Oct. 10 and offers locally sourced, organic produce, a selection of ready-to-eat items such as ham and cheese croissants, specialty items including oils and spices and kitchen items such as dish towels and cookware. The duo also offers four different subscription food boxes that include options of pastured meat, dairy products, fresh fish and bread. Every item in the food box will be sourced from farms in the Hudson Valley, the Finger Lakes and from Lancaster Valley. Sgrignoli, who grew up in Pennsylvania, traveled an unconventional path to eventually end up in the food business. She worked in journalism and advertising for many years before joining a community-supported agriculture (CSA) and becoming interested in where her food came from. Though she grew up surrounded by farms, Sgrignoli realized that factory farms did not participate in sustainable practices. “I think that Americans are used to paying very little for their food and they don’t think a resh
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