More than 40 years after a Vineyard pastor first stocked a church closet with grocery staples for hungry families, the Island Food Pantry is moving to a home of its own in Oak Bluffs.

Island Grown Initiative, the pantry’s parent nonprofit, held a ribbon-cutting Tuesday at 114 Dukes County avenue, a former automotive shop that later evolved into a local music gathering place called the Pit Stop.

“We’re in a moment in our community when so many of our neighbors... face the impossible choice between being able to pay their rent and being able to pay for the food they need,” Island Grown co-director Noli Taylor told a small crowd of donors and supporters.

James Anthony, Noli Taylor, Merrick Carreiro, Vicki and Armen Hanjian — Ray Ewing

The number of Islanders using the pantry has more than doubled in the past five years, from 2,200 in 2019 to 5,700 in 2024, Ms. Taylor said.

“This new location will allow us to serve all of those people better,” she said.

The pantry has been operating out of rented space at the Portuguese American Club since early 2021, when Covid-19 precautions and increasing need forced the operation to move from its longtime home at the United Methodist Church in Vineyard Haven, also known as the Stone Church. It merged with Island Grown Initiative that same year, to become part of the larger nonprofit’s suite of food equity services that include produce gleaning, summer lunches, a mobile grocery market and, more recently, a commercial catering kitchen to process fresh foods into prepared meals.

Island Grown purchased the Dukes County avenue property, a double lot with an apartment and multiple parking areas, for $1.72 million in May, 2023. The Martha’s Vineyard Bank Charitable Foundation donated $1 million to the project later that year.

The apartment became employee housing, while the rest of the building was renovated by Island firm Patagonia Restorations and shows little trace of its industrial past.

White-painted walls and dappled vinyl flooring run throughout the front part of the new pantry, which includes a windowed office where clients can talk confidentially with pantry staff.

An indoor ramp at the rear leads up to a spacious warehouse with room for weeks’ worth of food and supplies — including a walk-in refrigerator and a walk-in freezer — allowing the pantry to be prepared for bad weather or other emergencies stopping groceries from reaching the Island.

“We desperately need this warehouse,” Island Grown food equity director Merrick Carreiro said.

Deliveries from the Greater Boston Food Bank are set to begin next week, and the pantry is scheduled to open its new location Nov. 18, she said.

Ms. Carreiro said many pantry clients have already shifted to a new pre-order system, which will be in effect at the Dukes County avenue location for everyone but seniors, who are welcomed for in-person shopping at dedicated hours.

The pantry also makes deliveries one day a week to shut-ins. Most clients, however, will place their orders remotely for drive-through pickup at appointed times.

Among the guests at Tuesday’s ribbon cutting, retired volunteers Armen and Vicky Hanjian held hands and marveled at the pantry’s progress over the last four decades.

“Both of us just stood there in awe, thinking of the transformation over the past years and how the pantry is in good hands,” Ms. Hanjian said. The husband and wife pastors were among the pantry’s early stalwarts, with Mr. Hanjian its coordinator of volunteers for 20 years.

The Island Food Pantry got its start in the winter of 1981, Ms. Hanjian said, when Methodist pastor Helen Oliver was visiting a neighbor and discovered there was no food in the refrigerator.

Ms. Oliver began stocking non-perishable groceries in a closet at the Stone Church, which remained the food pantry’s home for 40 years. A volunteer workforce sprang up, with Islanders like the Hanjians packing groceries in the church kitchen before pickup days.

“We thought we were doing a lot when we were packing 25 bags three times a week,” said Ms. Hanjian, recalling that the pantry originally operated only in the winter to support Islanders whose seasonal incomes don’t quite stretch year-round.

The food pantry began distributing groceries all year after the economic downturn of 2008, and has seen steadily increasing use amid the Island’s widening housing and income gaps.

“Living on this Island, there’s so much of a wealth disparity,” said Anna Koppel, an Edgartown resident who found herself in need of the pantry during the pandemic while she was pregnant with her first child.

The pantry levels that disparity when it comes to food, said Ms. Koppel, who now works for the pantry and spoke at Tuesday’s ribbon-cutting.

“This food pantry, it’s really like a reach across and the community involvement is so beautiful,” Ms. Koppel said.

“It’s just real, quality food that... lets [people] hold on to their dignity in times that are difficult,” she said.