ERVING — Flis Market has been serving homemade, wood-fired pizza every Wednesday since January, and customer demand has led owners Jon and Liz Flis to expand the offering to Thursdays and Fridays as well.

The specialty grocery store at 5 West Main St. (Route 2) has been serving a variety of pizzas since the beginning of the year, making between 70 and 90 12-inch pizzas with a variety of toppings between 3 and 7 p.m. each Wednesday — a demand that prompted a pizza menu expansion.

“Everyone loves pizza,” Jon Flis said, noting that offering a broader menu has “cast a bigger net” when it comes to attracting customers. He explained that using a wood-fired pizza oven, compared to other cooking methods, gives the pizza a lot of flavor from the way the dough cooks.

“This pizza, it’s got char,” Flis said, adding that the crust will be different colors due to the way the oven cooks the pizza with an open flame, fueled by wood in a basin. “There’s going to be bubbles, there’s going to be all sorts of stuff, and we think it brings a lot of flavor to the table.”

Each week, the store serves 10 pizza options, including rotating weekly specials made with locally sourced ingredients. Each pizza is 12 inches with no substitutions, which Flis said is intentional to get the pizzas done in five minutes. Liz Flis added that having some pizza on a rotating menu while also offering consistent options like cheese and pepperoni helps them understand what customers enjoy best.

“It allows us to change it and see what customers are into, and then that informs kind of what we do,” she said.

In addition to wood-fired pizza, Flis Market offers grab-and-go meals that include sandwiches, salads and more, as well as catering.

Before embarking on serving wood-fired pizza, the couple reopened Flis Market in June 2021. The family business of 86 years had closed its doors two decades earlier. Originally operating out of Baldwinville, Flis Market was started in 1915 and run by Jon Flis’ great-grandfather. Both Flis’ father and uncle had worked there. The couple purchased the 4,747-square-foot building, which used to be Pocket Saver Market, in October 2020, and renovated the interior of the store.

In the time since Flis Market reopened, Liz Flis explained the store has received two grants, including a 2021 U.S. Department of Agriculture Healthy Food Financing Initiative grant that helped them purchase equipment and build a commercial kitchen to provide access to fresh food, per the grant requirements.

A fundraising campaign in September 2024 was conducted through the MassDevelopment Biz-M-Power Grant Program, providing a $10,000 grant that was then matched by $10,000 in fundraising. This allowed the business to purchase a double-door commercial convection oven as well as update some of the building’s electrical wiring to support it.

“We were very overwhelmed by our local support,” Jon Flis said. “We were really grateful. Our customers really came out and supported us.”

Flis Market is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and on Sundays from noon to 6 p.m. Updated pizza menus are available on Flis Market’s Facebook and Instagram, @FlisMarketErving. Customers can order by calling 413-422-1030.

Erin-Leigh Hoffman can be reached at ehoffman@recorder.com.