Adventure 4: Alemany's vs. Heart of the City Farmers' Market

After visiting several farmers' markets in the Bay Area, I decided to focus on two specific farmers' markets that I often visit. Every week I would visit the Alemany Farmers' Market and the Heart of the City Farmer's Market which is located in front of City Hall in the financial district in San Francisco. During my spare time after work in the financial district, I would take the Muni to the farmers' market in front of city hall and during my spare time in the mornings on the weekends, I would visit the Alemany's farmers' market. Both of these two farmers' markets have been opened for quite a long number of years and have been constantly adding new produces and making changes. While both farmers’ markets carry produce and are beneficial to shoppers, only the Heart of the City farmers’ market carry fresh seafood that are beneficial for shoppers interested in cooking seafood.

As we know from my previous Adventure post, the Alemany Farmers' Market open during the weekends as early as 5AM in the morning. Many different vendors coming from different cities in California bring their produces to sell here. Similarly to the farmers' market at City Hall, both farmers ‘markets consist of varieties of produces and vendors. Although the farmers' market at City Hall is available a little later in the day from 8AM to 2PM on Saturdays and similar times on other business days, the market is very accessible during the short amount of time it is opened due to its small size. Although the Alemany's Farmers' Market wins over the size of the market and the number of vendors compared to the Heart of the City Farmers' Market, the Heart of the City Farmers' Market has a much diverse variety of food ranging from fruits to desserts to live seafood. Not only does it consist of varieties of produce options, the Heart of the City Farmers' Market also has a convenient picnic table set up in the middle of the farmers' market for people to sit and eat. This allows people to enjoy themselves at the farmers' market while being entertained by a band of musicians down the road.

One interesting comparison between the two farmers' markets is the fact that the Heart of the City farmers' market sells live seafood. This was my first time seeing a seafood vendor at a farmers' market selling fish (Cat fish, Salmon, etc.) and crabs by the pound. Here are some photos of the seafood being sold here: <image>

As I walked around, I noticed the Heart of the City farmers' market were mostly selling fruits like tomatoes, pomegranates and not so much of the vegetables. People who can’t cook are also welcomed to purchase freshly made dishes from the many food trucks available at the farmers’ market. Between the Alemany and the Heart of the City farmers’ market, there are more food trucks located at the Heart of the City farmers’ market. Although the Alemany farmer’s market does not have as many food trucks as the Heart of the City market, the Alemany market surely has more food vendors. These food vendors include Hispanic food, pizza and so on.

As for payment, both farmers’ markets accept cash, tokens (from Food Stamps) and credit cards. But here is the catch to credit cards. The Alemany farmers’ markets accept credit cards in exchange for tokens. Those who plan to use credit cards would have to visit the office located in the middle of the market and exchange for tokens. On the other hand, the Heart of the City farmers’ market does the same but some individual vendors accept credit cards instead of having you go to the office(in this case a booth) to exchange for tokens. This makes things a little bit more convenient for some of us because we don’t have to spend extra time to get the tokens.

Conclude

Overall, these two farmers’ market has been my most visited farmers’ market and I will continue to make more observations. Because there is so much more observations I made from my visits to these two farmers’ markets, I will not be listing everything out but feel free to ask a question or comment below about the farmers’ markets.