The ovens at 1413 Westminster Street went cold on Saturday, October 31, after twenty years of Sin. Two blocks of the same street changed that week. Sin baked its last trays, and the Friday-evening makers markets at 945 Westminster had wrapped up the night before. This Saturday, November 7, Farm Fresh RI's winter market opens on the corner of Sims and Kinsley Avenues.
Those three addresses are linked. Several of the food businesses settling into West End storefronts came through one nonprofit pipeline, Hope & Main. This winter the place to find that pipeline is the indoor farmers market at 10 Sims Ave.
What closed at 1413 Westminster, and what replaces it
Sin's owner, Jennifer Luxmoore, set the closing for Halloween. Rhode Island Monthly quoted the bakery calling it "the perfect day for a bakery called Sin!" In the same post, Luxmoore thanked customers for twenty years of being "a part of your lives and celebrations."
The storefront won't change hands to a stranger. The Providence Journal reported that Babes Pie Co. will take over the space, and "sweets will again be baked and sold at 1413 Westminster St. in 2027, perhaps as soon as March." That "perhaps" matters. For now, March is a target and not an opening date.
Babes is owned by Mar Keller and is a Hope & Main graduate. On its own site, Babes calls itself a pop-up pie shop and bakery that sells seasonal, small-batch whole pies, slices, tiny pies, buns and pastries. Until the Westminster shop opens, you can preorder for Saturday pickup at 258 Kenyon Ave. in Pawtucket. Babes also pops up in Providence some Sundays.
So for the next several months, 1413 Westminster stays dark, and the pies that will fill it are being made somewhere else.
The kitchen at 945 Westminster that started this pattern
Farther east on the same street, Hope & Main opened West End Kitchens on June 26 in the old JKL Engineering building at 945 Westminster St. The building has stood for 76 years. The official ribbon cutting was Friday, October 2. The facility has three fully equipped kitchens and plans to add two more after the new year. It already hosts 35 startup food businesses.
The 35 matters because of what came before it. Hope & Main's first incubator opened in 2014 in a renovated elementary school in Warren. Founder and president Lisa Raiola told The Providence Eye that it graduated 18 food businesses into the East Bay around it, in Bristol and Warren. She said she wants the same thing to happen around West End Kitchens. Across both sites, the nonprofit says it has launched 550 food and beverage businesses.
On the West End's future, Raiola told The Providence Eye:
"I think the West End is on the rise, and on the verge, of becoming this amazing breakthrough destination in Providence from a retail standpoint."
In the same piece she named two graduates already running their own businesses near the kitchens, D'Norah Bites and Ja Patty. Babes taking over Sin's lease makes three. One tenant gives a sense of what's still in the pipeline. Brolitos Sandwiches, Brian Rolon's food truck with globally inspired sandwiches, preps out of West End Kitchens.
Why the public calendar at 945 Westminster goes quiet in November
Through October, the easiest way to sample the incubator's businesses was the West End Makers Markets. They ran Fridays from 4 to 7 p.m. at 945 Westminster St., and the last one was October 30.
Hope & Main's November events calendar is now aimed at would-be food entrepreneurs, not shoppers. It lists a ServSafe training on November 10 and a free orientation on November 16, then more orientations starting in January. No makers market is on the schedule for November or December.
That leaves the West Side with an empty bakery, a kitchen building that's open mainly to its tenants, and no Friday market for the winter. For those months, the food from this pipeline sells at 10 Sims Ave.
Saturday at 10 Sims Ave., starting November 7
Farm Fresh RI's Providence Winter Farmers Market opens Saturday, November 7. It runs every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. through April 24, 2027, at Farm Fresh's headquarters, 10 Sims Ave. Farm Fresh bills it as the largest indoor farmers market in New England. That's 25 Saturdays, compared with the four Friday makers markets in October.
The link back to Westminster is on the vendor list. Ja Patty, the Hope & Main graduate whose shop is at 1577 Westminster Street, is a full-time vendor at the market. A few of the other full-time vendors:
- Coastal Bagels
- Dune Brothers
- Ja Patty
- Mei Mei Dumplings
Guest vendors include Tolia Restaurant, Foggy Notion Farm, Little Room Mushrooms and Sweet and Sourdō.
The building has year-round tenants too, so it's more than a Saturday space. Farm Fresh lists these local food businesses operating at 10 Sims:
| Business | What it is |
|---|---|
| New Harvest Coffee Roasters | Coffee roaster |
| Anchor Toffee | Toffee maker |
| Rhed's Hot Sauce | Hot sauce maker |
| Wright's Creamery | Creamery |
| Harvest Kitchen | Farm Fresh's value-added products program |
| Distinguish Catering | Caterer |
| Red Tomato | Offices |
That's the same model as 945 Westminster, at a bigger scale. One building holds a cluster of small food producers, and once a week it opens to the public.
A few logistics to know before the first Saturday:
- The market takes cash, credit and debit, WIC, SNAP/EBT and Farm Fresh's Bonus Bucks.
- No pets inside, per Health Department rules.
- You can enter the parking lots from Sims Avenue or Kinsley Avenue. Kinsley is one way.
- The nearest bus stop is Atwells After Harris.
The greenway now ends at the market's corner
Getting to the market on foot got easier this year. In June, state and city leaders opened a new one-mile section of the Woonasquatucket River Greenway that runs from Kinsley Avenue to Promenade Street, as WPRI reported. The path includes pocket parks and two kayak launches. Farm Fresh sits at the corner of Sims and Kinsley.
That puts the market at the Kinsley end of a mile of new riverside path. The section opened in summer, so November 7 is the first winter market Saturday since it was finished. You can walk it, buy coffee from a roaster that works in the building and a box of dumplings, and be back on the path before the 1 p.m. close.
The West Side food calendar through April
Put together, the winter calendar looks like this:
- October 30: The last West End Makers Market at 945 Westminster St.
- October 31: Sin closes at 1413 Westminster St.
- November 7: The Providence Winter Farmers Market opens at 10 Sims Ave. and runs Saturdays through April 24, 2027.
- After the new year: Hope & Main plans to add two more kitchens at West End Kitchens.
- 2027, "perhaps as soon as March": Babes Pie Co. hopes to open at 1413 Westminster St.
If Babes hits that March target, it opens with about seven Saturdays of market season left. That would put a Hope & Main graduate's storefront on Westminster and another graduate's stall on Sims Avenue at the same time. With two more kitchens coming at 945 Westminster, there will likely be more businesses ready for storefronts by then.
Storefronts turning over, a new incubator, and a mile of new greenway all change what a West Side address offers day to day. If you own a home near Westminster Street or the Woonasquatucket and want to know what it's worth right now, RockHome Real Estate can give you a number based on your actual block. Get an Instant Home Valuation.
