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Heart of the City Farmers Market is a farmer-operated non-profit in San Francisco's United Nations Plaza that is open 3 days a week. We subsidize produce prices to keep them lower for this community and donate 1,000lbs of produce weekly for free distribution to the city's poorest residents.

Our idea is to offer a service that allows local businesses to sign up to receive subsidized low cost boxes of produce stocked by farmers with what's in season and easy to cook or edible raw. Prices are lowest for produce that is in season and plentiful and local produce lasts much longer. We can connect Mid-Market and Tenderloin convenience stores with our farmers to get affordable, in-season produce onto corner store shelves in addition to snacks and liquor. By including local businesses outside the community at regular market prices, we can help offset costs here and eventually provide free boxes to local SROs with seasoning packets and tips on how to use it to prepare a simple meal in a microwave. Over 30 years our farmers have developed close relationships with homeless and others who reside on the Plaza in the early morning hours, hiring them to help with market chores like unloading. We can hire these residents to deliver boxes of produce with hand trucks on our 3 market days, so delivery will be free for the community.

This area needs an affordable supermarket within walking distance so residents don't have to store fresh food and can get it easily. But that project will take many more years and millions of dollars. This project is a low cost way to get fresh produce onto store shelves now, while the work is being done to find a supermarket to commit to move here. Our goal is to help our farmers (we'll try for grant assistance) keep produce box prices free for SROs or low enough to make it profitable for local stores, so they can provide customers with conveniently close, easy to prepare and eat produce from local farms at low prices.