Photo by Emma Sylvester for The Lafayette

Ideal Food Basket currently has a location in Bethlehem.

A new grocery store will open in the West Ward neighborhood of Easton next year, seeking to alleviate food insecurity in the area and bring authentic dishes to the growing Hispanic community.

The store, Ideal Food Basket, is set to open in March or April of 2025. Juan Diaz owns the family-owned store, and the Easton store marks the second Ideal Food Basket stop in the Lehigh Valley. The first store opened in Bethlehem last year.

Juan Diaz deferred comments on the store to his son, Christopher Diaz, who is also a co-owner of the store.

“We’re mainly trying to get more for Hispanics in the area, to allow them to have more groceries,” he said. “We would like to help the community and the area by having affordable prices. We understand the area and want to help.”

The store will feature seven aisles of fresh produce, bakery and deli items, and hot prepared foods — empanadas, pork loin, sausages and ropas viejas are on the list.

“We’re excited to open the store and are hopeful it goes well for everybody,” Christopher Diaz said.

The West Ward is considered a “food desert,” according to a 2012 report by Lafayette College’s Technology Clinic. The issues led the city to establish the West Ward Market in 2022, an outdoor market held weekly in the warmer months. The neighborhood currently helps citizens by offering several weekly food pantries and providing dinner to children and their families at the Easton Area Community Center.

“Food deserts exist in locations where the residents don’t have equitable access to fresh food, that often takes the form of a grocery store,” explained Emily Roland, the manager of the West Ward Food Market.

The opening of Ideal Food Basket will place fresh foods within walkable distance for citizens of the neighborhood and will provide many new job opportunities, according to Roland.

“For the West Ward community, a lot of folks have difficulty finding ways to transport themselves to a grocery store,” Roland said. “If you don’t have a vehicle, that means relying on the bus or other forms of transportation, because until recently, there has been no permanent structure for folks to purchase fresh foods within walking distance.”

Kathryn Presto, the vice president of the Easton Area Community Center, warned that issues of food insecurity have worsened in Easton. She said that 50% of the 1,000 children in the area are struggling.

“When I was a little girl, families could survive on a single income,” Presto said. “We may not have had a car, but there were a lot of buses, and we walked everywhere, and on almost every corner there was a grocery store.”

“It was just a lot easier then than now,” she continued.

Members of the Easton community are hopeful that the introduction of Ideal Food Basket will make life easier for the high population of immigrant families in the West Ward.

“Having a well-stocked supermarket with culturally appropriate foods for a lot of our residents will be a huge boon to the West Ward and the city as a whole,” said Mark Reid, the head of Easton Urban Farm, an organization that grows and distributes locally grown produce to Easton residents.