Despite Fires and COVID, the Tenderloin Farmers Market Endures

Amy Smith's thoughtful feature "Despite Fires and Covid, The Tenderloin Farmers Market Endures," published by The Bold Italic this week, highlights the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and wildfires on our market and its farmers:

“'When it all started, no one knew what to expect, so we just plowed ahead like it was a normal year,' owner of Two Dog Farm Mark Bartle says of the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“But Bartle, who also operates a stand at the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, says it quickly became clear that closures of surrounding offices meant no workers to shop at the midweek market, and overall, a slew of regulations would change the way they did their business.

"Throughout the pandemic, vendors like Bartle at the farmers market — open Wednesday and Saturday — have served as an essential service to a neighborhood that’s mainly low-income residents without access to a supermarket offering a slew of innovative programs to help those in need. This is true even as farmers have struggled through a combination of the pandemic and California’s devastating wildfire season.

“'Heart of the City Farmers’ Market has served this community for 40 years and for the first time, we fear for the survival of this market,' says Kate Creps, Heart of the City’s executive director. 'We’ve closed all nonessential programs to narrow our focus to providing food relief for a devastated neighborhood that lacks a supermarket and has limited access to fresh foods during this pandemic.'”

Read more here: https://thebolditalic.com/inside-the-tenderloin-farmers-market-where-vendors-suffered-a-hard-year-but-continued-serving-55ac1ebfe00c

The Future of Heart of the City Farmers' Market

On November 6, 2020, Heart of the City Farmers’ Market’s Executive Director Kate Creps, Market Manager Steve Pulliam, and Assistant Manager Abby Winship Hoyos led a presentation hosted by San Francisco Public Library to discuss “The Future of Heart of the City Farmers’ Market.”

This virtual market tour explored the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and wildfire smoke on the farmers’ market at UN Plaza, its farmers, and the survival of its critical food access programs.

View the YouTube video of the presentation below to learn about our farmer-operated nonprofit’s unique history, mission to distribute over $1.5 million in food assistance each year to a struggling community, and new challenges that will affect this beloved market and its farmers into the future.

For the first time in our 40-year history, we fear for the future of the market due to budget shortfalls as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Revenue from stall fees has fallen over 30% during the pandemic and we have lost over $100,000 in sponsorships. Meanwhile operating costs have risen due to enhance social distancing protocol including additional staff costs, equipment, supplies, and security to serve customers safely and efficiently while health and safety measures are in place.

Our vendors are reporting devastating financial losses. Credit card sales at HOCFM’s information tent fell $170,000 between March and October 2020 and vendors report sales have reduced 50% this summer. As summer is our busy season, we fear for the challenging winter ahead.

We continue to distribute food assistance to low-income households to support this struggling extremely low-income community during the pandemic, securing an additional $200,000 to distribute as food relief vouchers at our info tent and delivering 1,500 boxes of produce to WIC families during summer 2020. We distributed over $500,000 in food relief between March and September 2020 and 95% has been redeemed with our vendors to date.  This additional revenue has been critical to supporting our farmers through the most challenging year for small farming in our market’s history. Our new Friday farmers’ market was permanently closed as of March 2020 due to the impact of the pandemic. 

You can also skim the transcript of the presentation here or make a donation to our “Save the Market” COVID-19 Fund at hotcfarmersmarket.org/donate. We remain ever grateful to our customers who have sustained this special market for 40 years.

We delivered 1,500 produce boxes to WIC families this summer!

Heart of the City Farmers’ Market worked with FarmacyCSA to deliver produce boxes in June, July, and August to 1,500 San Francisco families to address rising food insecurity due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Produce was purchased from our farmers with funding from the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Program and San Francisco Public Health Foundation, then delivered to families in partnership with Care.org, Door Dash, and A Better Course.

Produce was sourced and assembled by Farmacy CSA, a project by Katie Jones and her family who own Miramonte Farms and have sold at Heart of the City for more than 20 years. Katie’s team is now gearing up to assemble boxes to deliver to over 1,000 seniors funded by the Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program in partnership with the California Association of Food Banks. Visit farmacycsa.org to learn more or buy a box for pick up at the market.

We are grateful for the hard work of this partnership team to address the food access challenges faced by our most vulnerable neighbors.

#BlackLivesMatter and Black Farmers Matter

Equity and access are at the foundation of our non-profit’s mission to support and sustain small family growers and address food insecurity in the Tenderloin and surrounding neighborhoods.

Heart of the City Farmers’ Market’s food access programs provided $1.5 million in free produce in the past 12 months to San Francisco’s most vulnerable low-income residents, bringing additional revenue to support struggling local family farms.

Our non-profit’s responsibility is to ensure equal access to the critical food resources we provide across racial, cultural, and language barriers as well as ensure all people are treated with respect at the market.  In this way, we can help to address the systemic racism in our local food system.

Our responsibility is also to provide employees with the tools and training they need to recognize racism, bias, and power dynamics, then take steps to ensure equal access to resources. We require a 6-hour equity training for all employees to teach about systemic racism, implicit bias, multi-cultural competency, and how to be anti-racist.

Additionally, our responsibility is to help ensure equal access for farmers and vendors across racial, cultural, and language barriers to help their businesses thrive. Over 50% of our farmers speak English as a second language.

Heart of the City Farmers’ Market supports California Farmer Justice Collaborative and their response to the Farmer Equity Report that was recently published by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Read CDFA’s Farmer Equity report.

California Farmer Justice Collaborative’s (CFJC) mission is to ensure that farmers of color are empowered to directly participate and effectively lead in building a fair food and farming system in California. They unite farmers, advocates, and other allies to challenge historic and ongoing racism and other forms of structural oppression in order to create the comprehensive change needed to build this system. In 2017, CFJC worked to pass the Farmer Equity Act, adding a definition of Socially Disadvantaged Farmer and Rancher to the California Food and Agriculture Code. Learn more about the legislation here.

In their response to CDFA’s Food Equity Report, CFJC recommends the following steps to the CDFA and others in positions of power within our local food system:

“Disappointingly, this report failed to capture the history of structural racism embedded in our food and farming system and lay out clear steps to authentically address that inequity…”

 “We are committed to seeing the Department reverse the impacts of institutionalized racism in California food and agriculture... Our call to CDFA, legislators, and partners based on this report includes the following:

• We call on CDFA to provide direct support to stakeholder organizations that help farm owners/operators of color get access to land, capital, and language-appropriate training in order to directly address the inequity illustrated in the demographics of farm owners/operators.

• We call on CDFA to solicit input from stakeholder organizations that have a demonstrated record of advancing racial equity in agriculture to prioritize and make actionable the recommendations offered in this report.

• We call on CDFA to increase internal staffing that focuses explicitly on advancing the mandates of the Farmer Equity Act in 2020 and beyond.

• We call on our partners to hold CDFA accountable to the work of increasing its own capacity for implementing racial equity internally and externally by standing beside us and sharing this statement.”

For more information about the California Farmer Justice Collaborative and to read the collaborative's full response, visit farmerjustice.com.

We are grateful for the work of California Food Justice Collaborative and others to promote racial equity in farming and ensure we all remain focused on the learning and improvement process.  

 In the article White People Own 98 Percent of Rural Land, Young Black Farmers Want to Reclaim Their Share published on June 27, 2020, Mother Jones reported: 

“Black people have largely been expelled from the US agricultural landscape. In 1920, nearly a million Black farmers worked on 41.4 million acres of land, making up a seventh of farm owners. Today, only about 49,000 of them remain, making up just 1.4 percent of the nation’s farm owners, and tending a scant 4.7 million acres—a nearly 90 percent loss. 

“This didn’t happen by accident. Since Emancipation, Black farmers have had to fight for a share of this country’s fertile ground, due to a history of racist policies and land theft. But modern sustainable agriculture owes much to Black agriculturalists, explained Leah Penniman, co-director of Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York and author of Farming While Black, on a recent episode of Bite.”

Though over 50% of Heart of the City Farmers' Market farmers are people of color, we have not been successful in our efforts to recruit Black farm owners to sell with us. We will continue to make this a priority. Black Lives Matter and black farmers matter. We must all work to correct racial inequity in California’s local food system.

Civil Eats Op-ed: We Must Save Farmers' Markets

Without more support, the impact of losing markets could be massive to farmers, eaters, and regional economies.

By Ben Feldman and Kate Creps, published in Civil Eats on May 29, 2020

San Francisco’s Heart of the City Farmers’ Market has been an oasis of fresh, farm-direct produce in a neighborhood dominated by fast food and liquor stores since 1981. It makes a variety of local produce available to a diverse population of shoppers from around the city and provides income for 82 farmers and food artisans.

Each year, the market also matches low-income shopper’s produce purchases, resulting in $1.5 million in food assistance, making it the largest distributor of EBT of all farmers’ markets in California. COVID-19 has spiked demand for these services, to the point that lines now wrap around the block. Unfortunately, the virus has also strained the nonprofit’s budget and put all of that good work in jeopardy.

Farmers’ markets operators—the organizations and individuals who plan, coordinate, and run America’s farmers’ markets—are engaging in herculean efforts to protect their communities from COVID-19. In the case of Heart of the City, this means crowd control measures to limit the number of shoppers, pre-order options, and the elimination of sampling and touching produce before shopping, among other strategies.

Farmers’ markets have always been hubs for innovation. When farmers have opted or been forced out of the traditional supply chain, America’s 8,000 farmers’ markets have served as a lifeline to their businesses, filling a vital role to move their goods from field to plate. Now, in this time of crisis, these markets have had to devise rapid solutions. Apart from these efforts, emerging research suggests sunlight effectively kills COVID-19, adding more support to the idea that farmers’ markets may be the safest place to shop for groceries during the pandemic.

“There are benefits to visiting a farmers’ market in light of coronavirus … you’re outside, there’s fresh air moving, and the supply chain is shorter,” Yvonne Michael, an epidemiologist at Drexel University School of Public Health, told WHYY recently.

But keeping these markets safe is very expensive for the organizations that run them. For example, Heart of the City market expects to lose almost $200,000 by the end of the year because of a drop in attendance by vendors, who pay a modest fee to participate. These fees serve as the backbone of the market’s budget. And yet, many vendors have been unable to attend due to farmers’ health concerns, age, and labor shortages on their farms. At the same time, the market anticipates spending over $80,000 to maintain health and safety measures, including extra staff and equipment to maintain social distancing.

Yerena Farms, one of the vendors at the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market in San Francisco. (Photo courtesy of Heart of the City)

The Heart of the City market is far from alone. In a recent, as-yet unpublished Farmers Market Coalition member survey, 74 percent of the organizations that responded reported decreased income, while 93 percent report added costs, including the purchase of PPE for market staff, rental of more handwashing stations, new software or services, and additional staff to rearrange market layouts and monitor customer traffic. In a similar survey by the California Alliance of Farmers Markets (also unpublished), nearly 20 percent of farmers’ market operators reported concern that they may not survive the economic impacts of COVID-19.

The impact of losing farmers’ markets would be massive. They facilitate an estimated $2.4 billion dollars in sales for small and mid-scale farms in the U.S. each year.

“Without direct assistance for our state’s farmers’ markets, many of which already operate on a shoestring budget and an all-volunteer staff, we risk losing this vital outlet, drastically affecting the livelihoods of farmers,” says Robbi Mixon, director of the Alaska Farmers Market Association. “Small to medium scale farms are the cornerstone of local food systems. If farmers’ markets disappear, these farmers lose market access and economic stability.”

The cruel irony is that interest in local food and demand for emergency food needs have skyrocketed during the pandemic, making the work of farmers’ market operators more important than ever. And yet, they have largely been left out of relief efforts, both public and private.

And the fact that farmers’ markets are some of the safest places to shop at this moment hasn’t happened by accident. It’s thanks to the committed efforts of people who work hard for their communities. These are very lean organizations and many are close to a breaking point, especially since they have been left out of grants and recovery funds that have been made available to other sectors of the economy. For example, many farmers’ market operators were not eligible for the Paycheck Protection Program because of their nonprofit incorporation type. Only 501(c)(3) nonprofits are eligible for these funds and most farmers’ markets are not.

The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare many of the structural problems of our food system, not the least of which is the vital and underappreciated work that farmers’ market operators engage in to keep farmers in business and keep people fed.

The federal government needs to make the Paycheck Protection Program available to farmers’ market operators and provide grants to ensure that they are able to keep markets open and safe. If this work is to continue, farmers’ market operators will need the support of public and private entities as they develop and implement recovery plans.

Meanwhile, we hope the private individuals and foundations who can will step up and donate to support the operation of their local farmers markets. These community institutions have a pivotal role to play—now and in the future—and they’re much too important to lose.

About the authors:

Ben Feldman serves as Executive Director for the Farmers Market Coalition, a national nonprofit with members in all fifty states. The Coalition’s works with farmers market operators to achieve its mission to strengthen farmers markets for the benefit of farmers, consumers, and communities.

Kate Creps is the Executive Director for the Heart of the City Farmers Market, an independent, farmer-operated, nonprofit farmers market located year round in San Francisco's United Nations Plaza. The market opened in 1981 with a mission to support and sustain small farmers and make fresh food accessible for low-income customers who struggle to afford adequate nutrition in a city with the highest cost of living in the nation.

We remain open as an essential source of fresh food for OUR COMMUNITY

Our Wednesday and Sunday farmers’ market provides an essential service to a neighborhood that lacks a supermarket and will remain open until further notice.  The new Friday farmers’ market is closed. We follow enhanced health and safety measures to keep you safer.

Why are we open during the COVID-19 crisis?

• Mayor Breed and Governor Newsom have officially designated farmers’ markets as an essential service needed to remain open to provide food.

• Our market serves the nation’s densest and most diverse extremely low-income urban neighborhood, which doesn’t have a supermarket.

• We are the nation’s largest farmers’ market food assistance program and distribute $1.5 million in food assistance annually. Many customers can’t afford to eat without our programs. We are distributing an additional $100,000 to low-income households to provide support during COVID-19.

• Over 50% of our customers speak a language other than English at home and have diverse cultural food needs. Many linguistically isolated customers shop exclusively at our market.

• Low-income customers on food assistance can’t afford to buy an entire box of produce at one time. HOCFM is partnering with WIC and Care.org to deliver produce boxes to WIC households.

• Open-air environments with disinfecting sunlight are safer alternatives to crowded urban supermarkets that can quickly run low on nutritionally-dense, immune-boosting fresh produce.

• Food brought directly from the farm to our market is handled at a much lower rate than in supermarkets. Farmers' markets are transparent and traceable because local food travels short distances.

• Closing farmers’ markets means produce will rot in the field and essential food will be wasted. It is not possible to develop new distribution systems for local farms before ripe produce spoils.

• Now it is even more important that we protect our delicate local food system. We need to protect small farmers now, so they remain to feed us later when hyper-local food chains are critical.

What health and safety measures are in place during COVID-19? 

• Crowd control measures are in place at the market, please pay attention to posted signage and chalk markings. Keep 6 feet of distance between you and other customers.

• Many vendors offer pre-order options to speed up your shopping trip or shipping and delivery options if you are not able to visit the market, learn more here.

• Customers are not allowed to touch produce before purchasing. All items for sale will be pre-bagged and sold in a container. Vendors will help to select and weigh your produce over barriers if items are not in packages.

• No sampling is allowed at vendor stands.

• Vendors are spaced farther apart to allow customers to keep 6 feet of space between them.

• We have adopted enhanced sanitizing and disinfecting procedures for information tent equipment and tokens.

• Customer seating areas including tables and chairs and non-essential signage has been removed.

• Non-essential programming has been cancelled until further notice, including the Biblio Bistro education program, on-site education outreach, and market tours.

• Farmers’ market staff receive additional sick leave during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• We will continue to ensure vendors follow enhanced health and safety measures and health department regulations.

• We will continue to pay close attention to recommendations from the City and County of San Francisco and the CDC as they develop in order to adjust our operations as needed.

What can you do to keep yourself and others safer? 

• Stay home if you are sick and ask family, friends, or a neighbor to shop for your food.

• Keep 6 feet of distance between you and others when outside your home, called “social distancing.” Pay attention to the chalk marks on the ground that show where you should stand in line and also to the COVID-19 Advisory signage posted at the market in three languages.

• Wash all produce thoroughly.

• Wash your hands with soap and water frequently for at least 20 seconds or use hand sanitizer, including before you leave your house and as soon as you return home. 

• A handwashing station for community use is available near our market information tent, at the corner of Leavenworth and MacAllister Streets maintained by San Francisco Department of Public Works, and on the eastern boundary of our market next to the SF Pit Stop bathroom kiosk maintained by San Francisco Department of Public Works.

COVID-19 Pre-order, delivery, and shipping options

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: Open Wed & Sun

Dear customers and community partners,

Heart of the City Farmers’ Market understands the critical role it plays to provide food access for a vulnerable low-income urban food desert that lacks a supermarket.  Too many low-income customers cannot afford produce in a City with the highest cost of living in the nation without our food access programs.

Like supermarkets and grocery stores, we will remain open to provide food during the Coronavirus pandemic until further notice and are taking action to protect customers, vendors, and staff:

• No sampling will be allowed at vendor stands.

• We have expanded our sanitizing and disinfecting procedures.

• Non-essential programming has been cancelled until further notice, including the Biblio Bistro education program, on-site education outreach, and market tours.

• The following essential food access programs at our information tent will remain open until further notice:

  • EBT will be accepted and Market Match incentive dollars distributed for fruit and vegetables. 

  • Vouchers will be accepted for WIC Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, Senior Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, EatSF, Vouchers 4 Veggies, CHIVES, VeggieRx programs.  Heart of the City Farmers’ Market’s $5 vouchers are also accepted.

  • Credit card and debit cards will be accepted.

• Heart of the City Farmers’ Market staff members will receive additional paid sick time and will not come to work if they feel sick.

• We will continue to ensure vendors follow all health department regulations and pay close attention to recommendations from the City and County of San Francisco as they develop.

Farmers’ markets offer shoppers a unique open-air environment to purchase staple foods, however we encourage customers to follow these CDC recommendations:

• Wash all produce thoroughly before consumption and do not sample produce.

• Stay home if you are coughing, have a fever, or feel sick and ask a friend or neighbor to shop for you.

• Wash your hands with soap and water frequently for at least 20 seconds or use hand sanitizer. 

  • A handwashing station for community use is available near our market at the corner of Leavenworth and MacAllister Streets.

  • Sanitizer is available on the eastern boundary of our market next to the SF Pit Stop bathroom kiosk maintained by San Francisco Department of Public Works.

  • The San Francisco Public Library is closed until March 31.

• Maintain “social distancing” behavior while shopping including keeping 6 feet of space between yourself and others.  

Your food choices during the coming months will help protect our community’s smallest farmers from economic devastation.  Even short market closures could put many of our small farm families and food businesses out of business. Farmers are already struggling due to drought, wildfire smoke, and labor shortage.  We remain ever grateful to our customers for supporting small farm families and making our non-profit’s efforts possible. 

Please take care of yourselves, stay well, and let’s help each other take care of our community.

Our best wishes for good health,

Heart of the City Farmers’ Market

SF's Most Popular Farmers' Market Nearly Triples CalFresh Participation

From Stupski Foundation’s Change Can’t Wait blog, this piece is Part 1 of a 2 part series on San Francisco’s Heart of the City Farmers’ Market.

By Elvin Padilla, Jr.

I lived around the corner from San Francisco’s Heart of the City farmer’s market for five years. Every Wednesday, I stopped at the Phan Family Farm stand, where Mrs. Phan would often ask me when I was getting married. On some shopping trips, I would stop by the baker John’s spot to talk politics and by Roli Roti, where I always lobbied the founder to bring his famous hand-rolled pork tenderloin porchetta sandwiches to the Tenderloin.  

Swirling masses of shoppers at the market spanned every race, ethnicity, income level, and age. The market made us all one through the universal experience of food and the ancient civic experience of the great public market. I love the market most of all for this reason.

Years later when I joined the Stupski Foundation as director of food security, I knew Heart of the City was the first place we should turn in our effort to reach Social Security Income (SSI) recipients who were newly eligible for CalFresh—a policy shift that meant more than 24,000 San Franciscans could finally receive CalFresh. Many of the people Stupski wanted to reach already frequented Heart of the City, felt safe there, and had relationships with the farmers and Heart of the City’s staff. After learning about the market’s plans to boost CalFresh enrollment assistance once the new rule went into effect, we initiated a grant so the market could offer SSI recipients on-site assistance to apply for an EBT card. 

We recently spent a morning at the market to speak with Heart of the City’s brilliant market director, Kate Creps, one of the most knowledgeable figures in food security with a decade of on-the-ground experience. We were stunned to learn that in just one month, the number of people using their CalFresh benefits at the market doubled, and by December, it nearly tripled. In the next post in this series, I look forward to sharing a conversation with Kate about what has happened at the market since the policy shift went into place.

Heart of the City is a powerful and trusted civic treasure. We are all welcome there. If you don’t already, I encourage you to visit the market to connect, shop, and support our local farmers. If you have the ability to contribute to the vision and extraordinary work that Kate and her team are leading, invest in Heart of the City. Visit our blog next week to read our full interview with Kate about how Heart of the City continues to maximize CalFresh enrollment, maintain affordable access to locally grown food in our community, and support local farmers.

Apply for EBT at Heart of the City Farmers Market!

Thanks to a generous grant from the Stupski Foundation, low-income customers may now apply for an EBT card at our information tent.

3/18/20 UPDATE: This program has been closed until further notice to concentrate our efforts on essential food assistance distribution.

Spending EBT Dollars at the Farmers Market

CalFresh is a food assistance program that helps people stretch their food dollars so they can buy more fruits, vegetables and other healthy foods. Formerly known as the Food Stamps Program, this is a federal program run through the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Double your Calfresh dollars when you buy up to $5 in fresh produce at Heart of the City Farmers Market. Here’s how it works.

Heart of the City Farmers Market expands to Fridays, adds craft bazaar

3/18/20 UPDATE: The new Friday market has temporarily closed.

HOODLINE
By Carrie Sisto

The Heart of the City Farmers Market in Civic Center/UN Plaza, typically open on Sundays and Wednesdays, has expanded to Fridays. 

In addition to the regular lineup of local farmers selling fresh produce, the Friday market will also offer a new feature — a craft bazaar, in partnership with online craft marketplace Etsy and payment platform Square. 

The new market launched last Friday, June 7. It's part of San Francisco's Civic Center Commons initiative to better activate the public spaces near City Hall, Heart of the City executive director Kate Creps told us.

Cherries for sale at the market on Friday, June 7. | PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE CIVIC CENTER COMMUNITY BENEFIT DISTRICT

The market expansion is the first of several planned activities for the Civic Center Commons this summer, said Joaquin Torres, director of the Mayor's Office of Economic and Workforce Development. Block parties, games and Zumba classes are also in the works. 

"We are excited to highlight the best San Francisco has to offer while giving Tenderloin residents, Mid-Market employees, and visitors to the city an opportunity to engage with this vibrant neighborhood," Torres said in a statement. 

A vendor selling cherries at the market on Friday, June 7.

According to Creps, the Civic Center farmers market used to be open on Fridays in the 1980s. But crime in the area was too high and business wasn't robust enough to support three markets, so it scaled back to just Sundays and Wednesdays.

The timing of the new Friday market is ideal, Creps explained, because recent legislation has opened up CalFresh, the state's food stamp program, to a new population who can use their EBT dollars to purchase healthy food at the market. 

Prior to this year, Californians receiving Social Security (SSI) payments were barred from also receiving food stamps — the only state in the nation where that was the case. But last year, former Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law that makes SSI recipients eligible for CalFresh, which typically provides about $130/month in food assistance to eligible Californians. It went into effect on June 1. 

For each $5 in food stamps a customer spends to buy tokens redeemable at its vendors, the market matches them with a free additional $5, Creps explained. The matching funds not only allows low-income people to access healthier food options — it also bolsters revenues for the small local farmers and businesses who sell goods at the market.

The market has an information tent where customers can learn how to apply for and make the most of their CalFresh benefits. Creps said that having an extra day will give the market's staff a chance to better publicize the new law, and ensure more people have access to CalFresh and the market's matching funds. 

EBT and other food assistance is welcome at the farmers market, which provides matching funds.

The Civic Center Commons initiative and SF Etsy have greatly smoothed the process of re-launching the Friday market, Creps said. For example, the city already provides stewards (through nonprofit Urban Alchemy) to monitor UN Plaza on Fridays, which cuts down on Heart of the City's security costs.

Civic Center Commons is also providing tents and tables to host vendors from SF Etsy each week, and covering the permitting costs associated with the market.

Getting Heart of the City's farmers on board was tougher. Creps said that some were reluctant to increase their appearances to three times a week, because it can cost more than $500 for them just to get to and from San Francisco and cover the costs of any unsold leftover products.

But several farmers agreed to participate for a trial run, and others may join if the market proves profitable, Creps said.

Shoppers visiting SF Etsy vendors at the first Friday market on June 7. | PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE CITY OF SF

SF Etsy, which partnered with Civic Center Commons last year to host first Sunday shopping events, was excited to get a chance to come back for the new Friday market, said Rebecca Saylor, who helped curate the SF Etsy vendors.

Saylor, who makes custom pillows as OodleBaDoodle, put out a call to potential vendors and received interest from more than 70 local artists. The city's assistance with tables, tents, and marketing significantly reduces the barrier to participation, she said.

Some vendors will likely be staples, such as letterpress card and stationary maker Leah Jachimowicz, while others will rotate. Shoppers can expect to find a wide variety of crafts, including glass art, eco-friendly jewelry, and screenprints. A regularly updated Pinterest board will feature the line-up of each week’s participating vendors.

The new vendors will sell their wares alongside the UN Plaza Gift Gallery, which already operates a craft market every Thursday and Friday. The Friends of the Public Library will also be selling used books on the first Friday of each month.

The Friends of the Public Library will sell books the first Friday of the month. | PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE CITY OF SF

Starting around noon each week, the market will also offer a free do-it-yourself project for attendees. For its first few weeks, local graffiti artists from 1AM will be on-site with tote bags, spray paints, and stencils, Flynn said.

Market customers can work with one of the artists, or try their own hand at tagging a new tote for their market purchases. 

1AM artists helping market visitors paint their own tote bags. | PHOTO: COURTESY OF THE CITY OF SF

Square, which helped curate the market's vendors, is currently the only private sector partner for the event, said Civic Center Commons' Julie Flynn, with SF Etsy, Heart of the City, and the Civic Center Community Benefit District offering in-kind support.

The market is still open to other potential sponsorships, and to further tweaks to its hours and vendor mix. 

“We’re very much in the feedback stage,” Flynn said, adding that anyone with comments or questions about the Friday market can contact her through the organization's website.

The Friday market is open from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. each week, though some vendors will stay open until as late as 6 p.m., Flynn said.

The one exception is Pride Week: the market will close on Friday, June 28 to accommodate the celebration in Civic Center Plaza. 

Read more at Hoodline.com.

“Civic Center Stories” feature Heart of the City's Customers and Vendors

Malik Bey, who sells granola at Heart of the City Farmers’ Market on Wednesdays, was interviewed for the Civic Center Stories project in 2016.

“It’s more of a privilege to be out here to sell,” he said. “There’s like a waitlist for about ten years. We waited for about six, seven years, so now that we got here, it felt so good! You get to serve the people, you know? From high important federal judges to homeless that give you their last. It’s just a good place to be. You‘re at the center; you get tourists, you get families, you get business, you get all types of people. You have access to the world.”

Civic Center Stories was developed through the San Francisco Planning Department’s Summer 2016 Internship Program and attempts to bring a new dimension to the department’s community engagement process through a more personalized, one-on-one approach. By collecting people’s stories and taking their photos, the aim is to bring a human face to the individuals who spend time in the “Heart of the City” and develop a better understanding of the public’s sentiments, criticisms, and relation to Civic Center. Furthermore, it aims to get a better sense of the challenges and opportunities for the Civic Center Public Realm Plan.

To read more Civic Center Stories, including a feature on Heart of the City Farmers’ Market’s beloved pie vendor Heidi’s Pies, farmer Rosa de Santis, and our customers, visit the Civic Center Stories archives.

Civic Center is deliberately designed to host San Francisco’s greatest historical moments. Its ornate buildings and grand public spaces are the setting for gatherings of protest, performance, and celebration. For over one hundred years Civic Center has served this role.

But Civic Center is much more than a place for grand moments in history. It is also one of the biggest stages for the everyday pageant of San Francisco’s public life. It’s a place where young couples dressed in their wedding outfits pose for photos on the same patch of lawn where seniors from nearby residential hotels lie alone on the grass; where children visiting one of the local cultural institutions shout with delight in the playground while homeless individuals huddle with their belongings on the other side of the playground fence; where Symphony patrons walking to a concert at Davies Symphony Hall cross paths with teenagers ready to dance the night away at Bill Graham Civic Auditorium; where tourists from around the world gaze at the area’s landmark structures while workers rush by on their way to jobs in the very same buildings.

Countless scenes like these take place every day in Civic Center. But while people of diverse backgrounds may physically occupy the same space, actual interactions may be fleeting or non-existent. We often know very little about the people with whom we share this public realm. By sharing the stories and portraits of individuals who spend time in the “Heart of the City,” Civic Center Stories aims to bring a human face to the public sentiments, criticisms, desires, and relationships to Civic Center.

Civic Center Stories was developed through the San Francisco Planning Department’s Summer 2016 Internship Program as part of efforts to increase awareness and dialog in anticipation of the Civic Center Public Realm Plan—a new long-term plan for improvements to Civic Center’s public spaces. Over thirty stories were collected through curated and impromptu interviews with people who use Civic Center. This booklet will hopefully be the first of multiple editions of Civic Center Stories.

The stories touch on numerous subjects, from memories of the past to concerns for the future. They offer insight into what brings people to Civic Center and what entices them to stay. They include ideas on how to make Civic Center more successful and aspirations for what its public spaces might become. Across the board, one thing is abundantly clear—in Civic Center, people make the space what it is today, and their insights have and will continue to shape its future.

Happy World Toilet Day!

In honor of World Toilet Day 2017, this episode of San Francisco Public Works TV is dedicated to the innovative Pit Stop public toilet program, which provides safe and clean restroom facilities with an on-site attendant, needle disposal centers and doggie-waste bags for the public.

San Francisco Public Works TV interviewed Heart of the City Farmers’ Market’s Executive Director Kate Creps to assess the impact of safer toilet facilities on community activation efforts at the UN Plaza.

San Francisco Public Library: Photographic Exhibit on Heart of the City Farmers' Market

January 28 - June 30, 2017
Business, Science & Technology Center, 4th Floor, Main Library

This exhibit celebrates the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market—a uniquely independent, farmer-operated, nonprofit farmers market, in photographic narrative. Since 1981, with its mission to bring high-quality and affordable produce from small local farms to San Francisco’s low-income city center, as well as to support and sustain California’s small family farms, the market plays an integral role in the health and wellness of the community. The market operates year round on Sundays and Wednesdays and is centrally located in the San Francisco’s United Nations Plaza. The beautiful photographs by Marianna Nobre and Chelsey Stewart capture the spirit and richness of this amazing food source. This catalog introduces you to our local farmers, their lives, their farms.

Click here to see the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market Exhibit’s feature in the SFPL Catalog.

Catalog design: Ellen Reilly
Catalog photos: Marianna Nobre
Text by Kate Creps, Executive Director, Heart of the City Farmers’ Market and Lia Hillman, SFPL

1.2 Million Tokens: The Busiest Farmers Market Info Tent in California

The Heart of the City staff team works hard to increase revenue for local small farms by facilitating customer spending, attracting new customers, linking our farmers with food assistance programs that increase customer spending, and shouldering the burden of paperwork to accept alternate forms of currency. In 2016, grant writing and promotional efforts by market staff increased vendor revenue by $453,634.

Staff at our market information tent handed out 1,192,733 tokens in 2016, an average of 12,000 tokens per market day. That is unprecedented for a farmers market and makes us the largest farmers market token program in California and one of the largest in the nation. 

EBT Program: We hit a new record high in 2016 in our efforts to expand our EBT customer outreach. EBT sales in 2016 increased by more than $85,000 over 2015 sales. Due to our ongoing promotional efforts, EBT sales have increased by 322% from $123,000 in 2010 to over $419,188 in 2016. We are the largest EBT program of any California farmers market and are held as a national model for executing large-scale EBT operations on a low budget with a small team.  We train other market managers on best practices to create strong community partnerships and manage a high-volume system.

Market Match Program: Our partnership with Ecology Center's federal Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive grant allows us to match all EBT purchases up to $5.  $255,618 in blue Market Match incentive tokens was distributed in 2016, which EBT customers used to purchase additional produce from our farmers.  This program alone provided an average of $4,925 in extra sales revenue per farmer per year. 

EatSF and CHIVES Voucher Program: We've partnered with San Francisco General Hospital Foundation and the EatSF team to provide fruit and vegetables to low-income San Francisco residents with health challenges that will benefit from added produce in their diets. At the end of 2016, this partnership was expanded to include more participants as a part of the CHIVES program. Market staff accepts and fills out vouchers at the market tent in exchange for red tokens to shop with farmers. Our farmers benefitted from $113,016 in extra revenue from this program in 2016.

Credit Card Program: We continue to facilitate customer spending and level the technological playing field between farmers by swiping credit cards at the market information tent in exchange for green tokens.  Credit card purchases increased to $440,032 in 2016 from $404,911 in 2015.  We continue to pay the credit card processing fees at no cost to farmers or customers.

WIC Program: We continue to help farmers by redeeming their Women Infants and Children and Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program vouchers for them, so they don’t have to deposit them in their own bank accounts or pay any of the associated fees. Farmers turned in $35,609 to us in WIC checks in 2016.  We now accept WIC Fruit and Vegetable Checks.

VeggieRX: We also accept VeggieRx vouchers in partnership with Fresh Approach.

Heart of the City Farmers’ Market and Kaiser Permanente: A Produce Partnership and so much more…

EVERYTHING SOUTH CITY
Submitted by Joe Fragola, Kaiser Permanente

Every Wednesday and Sunday San Francisco’s United Nations Plaza bursts with community-centered activity thanks to the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market (HOCFM), a 35-year-old farmer-operated market that sustains small farms and makes healthy produce accessible to customers of all income ranges.

“We are dedicated to the principle that everyone has the right to enjoy the benefits of fresh produce within a few blocks of where they live or work,” said Kate Creps, executive director, HOCFM. “The market serves the Civic Center and specifically the Tenderloin neighborhood, which is a fresh food desert with no supermarket, dominated by corner liquor stores and fast food chains.”

When Kaiser Permanente began its partnership with HOCFM in 2014, Creps proposed support for the market’s Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) program, which enables customers who take part in California’s food assistance program to use a card to redeem their benefits. With Kaiser Permanente’s initial donation, HOCFM was able to increase its participation in the EBT program by 12 percent, which equated to over $25,000 of fresh produce purchased by low-income patrons. An added benefit to more customers purchasing through the program is the direct support for small farmers who are the market’s primary vendors.

“Once we learned how much our initial support for the EBT program increased access to fresh produce for many of the Tenderloin’s most vulnerable residents, we were eager to grow our partnership with the market,” said Randy Wittorp, public affairs director, Greater San Francisco Area. “For years, we have financially supported San Francisco community gardens, healthy cooking classes, and nutrition programs. This partnership was a natural next step.”

In 2015, Kaiser Permanente helped HOCFM launch the first ever Market Match program for the Tenderloin neighborhood, which provides low-income customers with up to $5 free to buy additional fruits and vegetables when they use their EBT card at the market. This has been crucial for those struggling to afford healthy food in a city with the highest cost of living in the nation. Kaiser Permanente’s donations in 2015 and 2016 enabled HOCFM to distribute $80,000 in match dollars to stretch limited food budgets, which also helped to sustain small farmers during the worst drought in California’s history. Kaiser Permanente’s support of the Market Match program helped grow HOCFM’s EBT sales by 35 percent in only two years.
Due to the high needs of the community in which it operates, the market has accepted food stamps (now the EBT program) since it first opened in 1981. Since that time, the market’s EBT program has become the largest and most successful in California.

“Kaiser’s support has enabled us to hire an EBT Program Manager to staff the very busy market information tent and provide orientation to new and existing customers,” said Creps. “We had no idea that the program would grow so quickly in three years, but the numbers are just off the charts.”

In addition to the EBT program, Kaiser Permanente’s donation directly supports the 53 small farmers who sell their products at the market. “We’ve seen farms go out of business in one week due to the drought and the economic stress it creates,” said Creps. “We strive to keep our participation costs minimal so the farmers can sell at a low price point and every donated dollar we receive offsets the stall fees we ask farmers to pay.”

Looking forward, Kaiser Permanente will continue to support the HOCFM with additional donations that could include healthy cooking demos both at the market and in Tenderloin SROs, whose residents often need to learn how to prepare the fresh produce they purchase at the market.

“There are so many positive ways the market impacts the neighborhood,” said Wittorp. “We look forward to leveraging our success and continuing our partnership with Kate and her staff in new and creative ways.”

California works to help food-stamp recipients buy fresh produce

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
By Melody Gutierrez

SACRAMENTO — California hopes to expand a nutrition program for the poor that puts more Brussels sprouts, chard and other vegetables and fruits on the tables of food-stamp recipients by awarding them with extra dollars when they buy fresh produce.

The state set aside $5 million in the current budget to tap into a federal matching program that rewards the poor with extra money for fruits and vegetables. In turn, the program helps farmers increase their profits.

“There are people who don’t have access to fresh foods,” said Assemblyman Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, who authored a bill last year to set up a state program to solicit the federal matching funds. “This is just one way to leverage their dollars and buying power. Processed foods are often cheaper, but this is a way to make their dollars go further so they don’t have to make those tough choices.”

The California Department of Agriculture is applying to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the matching federal dollars. The state expects to hear in March or April whether it will receive the federal matching grant.

Several California nonprofits obtain their own federal and private grants to offer the program through certified farmers’ markets. In the Bay Area, the Berkeley-based nonprofit Ecology Center collects donations and grants and has received matching federal grants to run its program. This year, the Ecology Center’s incentives program, which they call Market Match, is part of the state’s application for federal matching money.

The Market Match program works like this: People on public assistance can go to participating farmers’ markets, where they tell market staff how much they would like to use at the market from their electronic food stamps card. Customers are then given $1 tokens for that amount along with up to $10 in additional Market Match tokens that can be used to buy fruits and vegetables.

Ajua, a Berkeley resident who declined to give her last name, said the program has allowed her to put far more fruits and vegetables on the table she shares with her 13-year-old son. On Tuesday, she picked up persimmons, clementines, collard greens, lettuce and leeks. Ajua goes to three farmers’ markets in Berkeley every week, where she is able to receive up to $10 at each for every $10 she uses on her EBT card. That’s $120 a month in matching money, a substantial amount, she said, considering food stamps provide $350 a month.

Carle Brinkman, the Market Match program manager at the Ecology Center, said the program allows low-income people to afford healthy foods that typically cost more. Ecology Center works with farmers’ markets and organizations statewide to administer the Market Match program.

“This time of year, we hear stories about customers saving their benefits to use them at the market in order to prepare a nice meal during Thanksgiving or Christmas,” Brinkman said. “Market Match is really doing double duty by supporting low-income families and allowing them to make healthy food choices and supporting small and mid-sized farmers that sell at these markets.”

The food-stamp match program began in 2007 and is operating in dozens of states. In California, there are 220 farmers’ markets that offer Market Match and 40 additional sites like farm stands and mobile farmers’ markets that offer the program.

Brinkman said the program is growing and that she hopes to reach more rural communities in the future. She said in the Bay Area, the program is helping many people bridge the gap between the high cost of housing and paying for basic needs like food.

“If people have a little more to spend on groceries, they can put the income they do have toward housing, child care and other expenses,” she said. “We always hear stories about how this makes such a difference for people.”

Kate Creps hears those stories, too. The executive director of the Heart of the City Farmers’ Market in the Tenderloin district began offering Market Match in June 2015. In its first year, they gave out $265,000 in matching incentive money to people using their food stamps at the market.

She said given the area’s dense population of poverty and the city’s high cost of living, there is more interest than there is money for the program. Creps said they only have enough grant money to match $5 of what people spend using their food stamps at each market.

“It’s impossible to try to live in the city right now,” she said. “There are so many people scared about the future and so many people trying to pay rent and get fresh food. That’s even harder in the Tenderloin because there is no full-service grocery store. We are hearing constantly that people couldn’t afford produce in the city without this program and we are seeing an unprecedented amount of people shopping with an EBT card.”

The Heart of the City Farmers’ Market is part of the Ecology Center’s California Market Match Program. Creps said Heart of the City’s Market Match grant allows it to double whatever private donations it receives, so that if someone donates $500, the farmers’ market can give out $1,000 in Market Match money. A $20,000 donation would allow the market to give its low-income shoppers $10 in matching money instead of $5 for a month, which would be a major gift this holiday season.

“We see the added Christmas rush,” she said. “People are buying for holiday gatherings. We are excited that they include so much produce in their meals.”

Melody Gutierrez is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mgutierrez@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @MelodyGutierrez

Market Match Generates $225,000 for Low-Income Customers and Farmers

In June 2015, Heart of the City Farmers Market launched its first ever Market Match program thanks to the Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive grant, a new partnership with Ecology Center, and three generous community sponsors: Kaiser Permanente, Bi-Rite Market, and PES Environmental, Inc.

During its first year, Heart of the City's Market Match program matched all EBT card purchases up to $7 with extra dollars to shop for fruits and vegetables.  Low-income shoppers were able to double their spending power each market day thanks to funding secured through this program.  We are proud to report that $225,000 was distributed as Market Match dollars during the first year of the program, stretching limited food budgets and bringing a much-needed source of additional revenue for our small farmers.

Heart of the City Farmers Market has secured funding to continue the Market Match program for another year.  EBT customers' purchases will be matched up to $5 each day they shop with our farmers until April 2017.  Over $200,000 in funding has been secured to provide this extra support to EBT customers struggling to afford fresh produce in a city with the highest cost of living in the nation.