I recently started going to The City Market in Kansas City. Once or twice a week, they do have a farmer’s market there, but every single day of every single week (year-round!), they have the “city market.” Now, I don’t know exactly how to describe it, but as I understand it, the vendors are produce brokers, meaning they buy wholesale and supply the grocery stores. I don’t know much about it; all I know is that the produce is DIRT CHEAP! Of course, when I first went, I had to keep reminding myself that most of the produce is conventional, so I have to take that into consideration before I drool all over the cheap prices. The more expensive price I pay at Whole Foods is partly for being organic.
But can you imagine my delight this month when I began seeing some organic produce there? I found organic bananas, organic apples, and organic raisins. Not a ton, but I am expecting more to come as we get further into the growing season. I found 3 lb bags of organic Braeburn apples for $2. That is about $.66/lb! The cheapest that I think I’ve EVER found organic apples before was about $.99/lb – if I found them at that price I would stock up like crazy!
I also found Earthbound Farms organic raisins, 14 of those little ½ oz boxes for $.75 – or, at one stand, you could buy 3 bags for $2. That was about half the price of the organic raisins that I had just purchased at Whole Foods! So… I stocked up, of course!
And the organic bananas were priced at $.50/lb, but I got them for $.35/lb by buying a whole case. Read more about that here.
Living in an area with all four seasons (and thus, limited fresh local produce in the winter), the City Market has been a great discovery for me. I believe that the fresh local produce that I will be able to find at farmers markets in the summer will be of higher quality than what the produce brokers provide, but until there is more of that around, I am pleased to get the same quality products that I can buy at Whole Foods at a much cheaper price! I encourage you to do the research to see if you have produce brokers or some kind of City Market near you!
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