While Oakland Sleeps, a 100-Year-Old Produce Market Bustles With Life

For her series California Foodways, Lisa Morehouse is reporting a story about food and farming from each of California’s 58 counties.

When most of California is asleep, a few square blocks on the edge of Oakland’s Jack London Square come alive with people, produce and machinery. It’s the Oakland Produce Market, and it’s been supplying grocers and restaurants for more than 100 years.

The streets fill up with pallets, stacked with cases of fruits and vegetables. Boxes of tomatoes, mangoes and grapes take up most of the sidewalks. Workers weave between semi trucks, drive forklifts, use hand trucks, take orders and pack delivery vans.

At 3 a.m. every Wednesday, Doug Mayeda starts looking through boxes at Farmers Produce — one of the dozens of separate businesses here called produce houses. He’s picky, choosing what he knows will sell at Village Market, where he’s the produce manager.

One morning in March, he turned his eye on bell peppers — examining their stems, assessing their quality and finding ones just the right size for his clientele. He spied a pallet with peppers stacked eight boxes high, and grabbed one from the top.

Then he inspected a box of pineapples with a nice color. “As far as retail goes,” he said, “they’re going to buy from the color.”

Mayeda and Farmers Produce owner Sammy Freccero had an easy banter that comes with sharing decades in the produce business.

Freccero said he’s been doing this work since 1979.

“My dad used to drag me to work in the summers. I never had summer vacation and I hated it,” he said. “I said I would never do this, but it was the best thing he did for me.”

So Frecerro did the same for his son.

“I’ve been bringing him down here since he was six years old,” he said. “One of my customers made a little hand truck for him, and I have pictures of him pushing the hand truck around. If I’d say ‘Go grab me a box of this,’ he knew what to grab.”

His son’s in college now. Frecerro wants him to have choices, to consider a life that’s not on this nighttime schedule, but this business is here for him if he wants it.

For decades, his father specialized in supplying corner markets, Frecerro said.

“The mom and pop stores — they used to buy a lot, but then all these big chains came and took over and took all that business away,” he said.

But Frecerro was able to adapt. He said that now, in addition to grocers like Mayeda, they sell to businesses that supply restaurants.

“You go to a restaurant in Walnut Creek or anywhere in the area, we more than likely touched something at that restaurant.”

You don’t have to run a restaurant or work for a grocery store to shop here, as long as you buy in bulk.

At 3:45 a.m., Mayeda walked through the market. He sniffed some mangoes and scoffed when he inspected a label on green seedless grapes from Peru — with a packing date over three months old. “You gotta be kidding me. Did they print that right?” he said, laughing, before moving on.

By 4:30 a.m., Mayeda reached Fujii Melons. He met R.J. Napolis, the company’s co-owner, decades ago. They both learned a lot about the produce business from Fujii Melons founder, Ronald Fujii.

Mayeda could call in his orders, but he always comes in person, looking for something not on his list, something special that customers might want.

Maybe this Cara Cara orange Napolis just got in? Mayeda pulls a knife out of his pocket and cuts open the pinkish-red flesh.

“Most of the flavor is on the bottom side, so that’s where you want to try it. The blossom end, not the stem side. Same thing with melons, too.”

He ate the fruit before declaring: “Sweet, juicy … no flavor. Looks really good though.”

These Cara Caras weren’t quite up to Mayeda’s standards that day, but every week, he has a long list of produce to buy from Fujii Melons, like papayas, berries and clamshell containers filled with herbs. Everything gets wrapped up on a pallet to be delivered to Mayeda back at Village Market by 5:30 in the morning.

It’s this connection, Napolis said, between people and food that makes him love running a produce house.

“I can’t tell somebody over the phone, ‘Try this, try that.’ It’s something that they have to see, and smell, to appreciate what it is,” he added.

As he described his passion for this business, declaring he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, a beatific smile crossed his face.

“When you try to buy the best produce, and then when you see somebody looking for it and you give them that taste and they open up like, ‘My God, what was that?’ That’s what I love.”

Plus, the folks who work here, at these hours? They’re a different breed.

“We’re nightwalkers,” Napolis joked.

Nightwalkers, each with a specific job. Each day, before midnight, semi-trucks arrive from the Central Valley or Southern California ports carrying produce from around the world.

And at night, “we have what’s called lumpers,” Napolis said.

That’s the term for the forklift drivers who get paid by truckers to unload pallets of produce. Then, workers at the produce houses take over.

“Forklifts are running up and down the streets constantly,” Napolis continued. “We have pallet jacks for products going up and on the street. People with hand trucks up and down the street. So it’s like an inner world, with people just moving, and it’s 6:00 in the morning.”

It all looked like barely controlled chaos, but with more time, the choreography of the movement revealed itself, as did the skill and experience that goes into the work.

A little after 5 a.m., down the street at Golden State Fresh Produce, Ali Awnallah pointed out that the graceful movement of forklift drivers carrying pallets belies the reality.

“You’ve got to be careful. These forklifts are like Army tanks,” Awnallah cautioned.

Awnallah does quality control, but he’s a natural salesman Technically, all of these produce houses compete with each other, but you wouldn’t know it from how he interacted with his neighbors. If he’s out of a certain product, like chayote squash, Cervantes Produce will sell it to him practically at cost.

“We help each other out like that,” Awnallah said. “Cervantes Produce has been in the market for many, many years. Number one in the market también.”

His neighbor chimes in: “Mucho trabajo, poco dinero.” Many years of a lot of work, for not a lot of money.

Around 7:00 a.m., Alfonso Gonzalez stacked boxes of tomatillos and tomatoes into his van. Where was he going?

“You’re not going to believe it,” Gonzalez said. “All the way to Sonoma, California, two hours from here.”

He’s owned La Morenita Market #3 there for 30 years, and has been shopping for produce here nearly as long.

“I get it very cheap, and I’m going to sell it very cheap,” he said.

By 7:30 a.m., sales at a lot of the produce houses were winding down.

In other cities, similar markets were demolished years ago. For decades, there’ve been articles predicting this place’s imminent demise, but it’s still here.

In 1917, the market moved to this location near the port and a railroad line, Gary Knecht said. He’s a retired city planner and historic preservation planner for the city of Oakland who has lived a few blocks away from the market for nearly 50 years, and used to lead historic tours of the neighborhood.

A handful of produce vendors hired an Oakland architect to design these buildings, Knecht said.

“It’s a very simple and utilitarian look,” he said, looking at the squat buildings, with awnings extending over the sidewalks, like oversized hat brims. “They’re just plain, simple buildings that I really love.”

The original doors were screens, he said.

“The produce that got delivered here would be indoors, with fresh air blowing in and out. Refrigeration is one of the biggest changes in the market.

Changes have also happened in the neighborhood. Over coffee, chicken and waffles at the Oakland Grill — a restaurant that’s been in the market since the 1970s — Knecht described the transformation of the waterfront, where many East Bay residents drink, dine or take the ferry to San Francisco.

“It was almost exclusively industrial up until the ’50s or ’60s,” he said.

Lots of warehouses. Some converted to office buildings, and then, Knecht said, around 1990, zoning laws changed and a few condos came in. That really got some vendors and preservationists worried about the future of the market.

He said, over the years, the city and developers have tried — unsuccessfully — to interest the vendors in moving the market to a different location. And, he added, plans to develop the Jack London District further have never quite taken off.

If that changes, the produce market does have some protections under Oakland’s zoning laws, Knecht explained. Designated “an area of primary importance” for its architecture, any major alterations or proposed demolition would trigger lots of reviews and garner a lot of attention.

“I applaud the alarm. I even occasionally share the alarm,” Knecht said, referring to concerns over the market’s future. “But every day I walk through the market, and when it’s bustling like it is today, I feel okay.”

This story is part of the series California Foodways, about food, agriculture and the people that make both possible in each of California’s 58 counties.