Students living in Streeter Hall or Morrison Hall who are looking for groceries can avoid a long, cold walk to campus by visiting the Morris Street Market in Morrison Hall, which re-opened on Feb. 18.

Most students know the Eagle Express Market as the place to get groceries on campus, but with the resident population increasing due to freshmen being required to live on campus, EWU Dining Services chose to provide students with more options.

EWU Director of Dining Services Dave McKay said,“[We saw] a substantial increase in the resident population. Anybody who stood in line at the Roost or at Baldy’s knows there’s more people on campus this year.”

The market is open from 7-11 p.m., Sunday through Thursday, and only accepts dining plans or debit cards, according to the EWU website. The market offers a wide variety of food options from frozen meals to snack options such as ice cream and chips.

McKay said, “We’ve got ground beef in the freezer. [We have] stuff that you can make nachos or spaghetti with, [but] it’s really a lot of snack items because that’s what it seems like people look for.”

When the market was open in the past, EWU Dining Services experimented with multiple hours of operation for the market, even having it open in the mornings, but decided to keep it open from 7-11 p.m. because that is the time it serves students the most.

“It’s one of those areas that [students] seem like, once they get into the hall for the day, they’re less likely to come down to other parts of campus,” said McKay. “We haven’t seen any requests for different hours.”

So far, the market is seeing enough business to stay open.

“It’s seeing a nice flow. There’s between 160 and 200 students a night. We have to keep in mind it has to cover its expenses to be there and it’s doing that so far. It’s a good service to offer,” said McKay.

Briana Martens, a student supervisor at the Eagle Express Market who also works at the Morris Street Market, said, “We get big bursts of students, [sometimes] it’ll be really busy.”

When the PUB is remodeled, McKay said EWU Dining Services hopes to give students their own small grocery store to shop in on campus.

“[We want] more fresh produce, more options, a deli case maybe. Our new store that we’ll put in the PUB remodel is really going to be a focus. [We want] to double in size,” said McKay. “We want to look at where we can service the most students at any time and make it the most convenient.”

In the meantime, the Morris Street Market is having drawing giveaways and will soon have more snacks for students.

“We’ve got some drawings going on up there; we’re looking for input of what products students would like to see, [and] we’ll be adding a F’Real milkshake machine late next week or the following week,” said McKay.