Downtown will soon be home to an island first, as the Vashon Island Baking Company branches out to open a permanent storefront for island dairy and egg vendors.

Samantha Weigand, the bakery’s owner, hopes to open the Glass Bottle Creamery in the space between the old quilt shop and Hinge Gallery  by the end of the month.

“The space is taking shape, and the permits are chugging along,” Weigand said of her new venture.

The creamery will sell locally produced milk, cheese and eggs, as well as ice cream that Weigand will soon make herself at the bakery. The idea, she said, is to have a place where locals and off-islanders can shop for these items anytime, as well as offer a central location to eliminate the need to hop from farm to farm or wait for the market each weekend.

“It’s like a gateway,” she explained. “A retail introduction for people who may not know about these vendors or products.”

Weigand credits Vashon’s highly organized arts community for the inspiration.

“The food community here is not quite where the artistic community is as far as offering centralized outlets for vendors,” she said.

As of press time, the products that will be sold at Glass Bottle Creamery are raw cow’s milk and cheese from Cornerstone Farm, raw goat’s milk and cheese from Burton Hill Farm, chicken eggs from Pink Tractor Farm, quail eggs from Wishing Rock Farm and Weigand’s ice cream.

“I am very excited about the ice cream. I have a lot of experience with that,” she said, adding that there will be gluten-free options for items like ice cream sandwiches made with cookies from the bakery, a dairy-free option and six to eight rotating flavors.

The ice cream will be made with milk from Smith Brothers Farm, Weigand noted, since legally it has to be pasteurized, and also to keep the price point manageable.

Emphasizing that the storefront is not intended to replace the farmers market for these vendors, Weigand said that the idea is to supplement what the business vendors are already doing.

“They can always do more business, so this is like a bonus. It’s a retail arm for the farmers that they don’t have to manage themselves,” she said.

“I think the time is right for this sort of thing on the island,” she added. “Hopefully it will lead the food community to something bigger.”