My gal pal Jackie* runs a Baked Goods and jam booth every Saturday and Sunday at the local Posh Farmers' market. She is no young athlete. She's sixty. She's no healthfooder, she likes to eat the baked goods she's so good at creating & she's chubby. She's no beauty, her hair goes frizzing out to her shoulder blades. But she does know FOOD being an informal, hobbyist food historian who's written articles on Irish food, chocolate, Medieval food for famous national magazines for decades on end. She made it to the LA TIMES food syndicate, and NYC TIMES food syndicate and was editor in chief for a Martha Stewart type magazine in California. But other than that, she's just like you and me. She cooks well and is fast on her feet, smart, verbal and an utter trip!
Well, lately, this gal has been baking pies, tortes, quiche and making unusual-flavor jams for her very own booth at the many upscale L.A. FARMERS' MARKETS. You know what those are, Yuppies with jaded appetites, fat bellies and wallets, out on weekend yumyum patrol? She makes her rent out of two days at market. And five days cooking of course.
To generate business outside the farmes' markets, she created an online presence, as "Heritage Kitchens" and announces at her website that she makes "jams, jellies, marmalades, chutneys, fruit preserves, pickles and relishes are all made the old-fashioned way – by hand, in small batches, with minimal sugar and salt, and absolutely no preservatives or chemical additives whatsoever. Unlike the overly sweet and sugary high-fructose corn syrup varieties sold in supermarkets, every one of The Heritage Kitchen gourmet items is full of homemade natural flavor, nutritious, and purely delicious." But I don't think she makes a dime online. If she did walnut fudge she would but, heavy glass jam jars thru the mail? Jam is JAM no matter how original her recipes are, and click on that URL you'll see hers are a tad unique.
Jackie instead works the best farmers' markets in L.A. California. Well, technically the best markets are in Santa Monica (Wed AM and Sat AM, at 3rd/Arizona) and Hollywood (Sun AM on Ivar St.) She works for the VALLEY marktes, still plenty posh, the Saturday morning Calabasas farmers' market. and the SUNDAY Studio City market.
Her clients are posh foodies --the kind that always gossip in food lingo: ""I love the granola from The Scone Age. I don't care for their scones, but I'm addicted to their blueberry-cranberry granola." or "For high-calorie sweets you just can't beat Blackmarket Bakery. Their lime-coconut croissant is a masterwork, and I'm in danger of mugging people for the orange shortbread or those fab brutti mai buoni cookies. Did you know that means "ugly but good?" or "I love Farmer John who sells the zucchini blossoms. One thing to look out for, which I've learned from experience, is to buy from him and not from one of his co-workers. Sometimes, those workers don't know the correct price and they might overcharge you." Or this sentence, overheard, which makes me think there's something quasi sexual to the whole FARMERS' MARKET experience :'who is that guy, I cannot remember his name but he's young, lean, very tan with tattoos on his forearms and a bushy goatee, who sells fantastic strawberries, you have to find him."
That last lets us know what these housewives are doing at the market beside noshing --they're eyeing farmers. But hey, it's worth it as a FARMERS MARKET is NOT the bargainville that it seems to be unless you only go Sunday noon at closing and hondle the vendors. This can be done as food merchandise can't be used a week later.
Only then is it cheap. Mornings, the Farmers Markets are a POSH YUPPIE enclave and prices are higher than in even posh grocery stores like GELSONS or WHOLE FOODS, a fact which is irritating to the tourists to say the least. You certainly don't need to go to a farmer's market to get the best produce. Sometimes, I'll find produce in a ol' regular supermarket that's cheaper and just blows away the stuff I've been getting at the farmer's market but face it, the reasons why people shop at a farmer's market, is not necessarily for food. It is a scenic wonder comparing with the Grand Canyon and Cheops Pyramid. A SENSORIAL TRIP! A wall to wall nosh only with foods that you can't find at supermarkets like TURKISH MULBERRIES and a lot of South american fruits that have weird names and Lime goat cheese croissant, and savory fig, onion tart. Even at a buck a bite the yuppies can nibble for hours.
So, my gal pal cooks three days a week, doing the jams week days and the baked goods just the night before the market. Frequently the cream pie filling is thrown into the shell at the market when client buys it so that the shell is crispy. Her jams are of fabled flavors, port jelly, rhubarb strawberry. Her kiwi lemon peel mix is a sensation, her own invention. Her pies, cookies and cakes reflect her Italian Philly origins. She also re-sells EBAY vintage table linens from all over America at high prices. This led to a second business; she copied some of the real vintage designs at a local silk screen factory so that if you want a 95$ all linen tablecloth with a skyline of NewYork on its borders, see my chum!
It's not an easy life. All week long she cooks or runs around town picking up her pie tins. Weekends, she has her cat wake her at 5 am and he never misses, letting her sleep long on week days. She packs up her booth and tables which unfold out of her van, puts up her sun tarp and greets her regulars and that's what I wanted to tell you about. Not the market, THE CLIENTS. HER REGULARS. As she gets 30$ a quiche and 8$ for the half pint, unpronounceable Amazonian fruit sherbet only the super rich come to her. Everyone else is weeded out by the fees. Egalitarian, she ain't! And when she does pie-tin pickup at their l0 million dollar homes, it's a riot. Her client for cream pies, jam lived in a famous Sports Star's 6 million dollar home, worth twice that today, and had a garage full of Ebay vintage serving platters. She told my pie sweaty pal, 'I know you barely make it, take all these boxes of vintage serving ware as a gift, do a holiday gift package for your booth. They're my gift to you. In the garage, storage boxes went to the ceiling. "Take them all!" I volunteered to help her load the van!
Another woman client loved the vintage table linens, the first ones from EBAY and said: "We collect many different types of vintage objects. You are the first person we've met who seems to have an eye for all of them, could you become our buying agent? My pal went to their office BUILDING, 20 stories of marble, took the elevator to their penthouse office where their software business makes gadzillions, saw their collection in the offices involving vintage serving ware, vintage ceramics, artware pottery and became their personal buyer. Of course they also bought her entire collection of vintage tablecloths, Vera hankies, etc.." and within a few months they had underwritten her tablecloth silk screen venture creating those unique, linen tablecloths ---which are now sold in the White House Gift shop and Smithsonian and Rockfeller Center so it's growing by the hour!
My point is, if you're Jackie and you have the beans, from such little seeds gigantic bean stalks grow! If you cook, get the city license for wholesaling food. Jackie had a friend with a kosher, legal kitchen as he owned a restaurant, so she used his address for her license and Health Dept. inspection even though she cooks at home.
You learn as you go. She was at the Farmers' Market, a perfect tyro on the ground the first day, learning, and quickly saw that Sundays at closing time, all the farmers would give away their produce for pennies, facilitating her next week of jam-brewing.
She's learning which keeps the brain cells young, she's having fun, she's making a living. It's a one woman business that reminds me of the Jessica Lange film "Real men don't Leave" where an overnight widow goes into a cookie biz. Rent it, you'll love it. Consider THE KITCHEN as a new age business for yourself and your daughters.
*Jackie is not her real name, but I know she wouldn't want me to use
her real name in this piece.
<-----
BACK TO THE GUERILLA CAPITALISM WEBPAGE