Market helps folks to veg out

[attach]6078[/attach]Produce in South Riverdale was selling like hotcakes at the neighbourhood’s new Good Food Market.

Run by the Riverdale Food Working Group, a non-profit organization community members and non-profit organizations, the market was created to make affordable produce accessible to the community.

Its June 5 opening day was such a success, by the time local councillor Paula Fletcher arrived to check out the market — just three hours after opening — it had sold out of almost everything.

Earlier in the day, market organizer Wanda Georgis, a social worker with South Riverdale Community Health Centre, had joked with the Town Crier about that very possibility.

“Paula Fletcher’s coming at 6 o’clock and I don’t know if we’re going to have any food left!” she had said.
Fletcher was elated by the results and noted that the working group is definitely meeting its mandate.

“This is a very mixed community — there’s a lot of mixed incomes here,” she said. “This is a market, as I understand, which is set to make sure good food is affordable and available to everybody.”

For this market’s first day, planning was a bit of a shot in the dark, said working group member Coreen Jones.

“We had no idea how it would go, so we bought according to having no idea,” she said, adding they decided to buy more than what FoodShare recommended. “We figured this location would be really good just because there’s so much street traffic.”

Local resident Maggi Redmonds was one of the first there and was ecstatic that she managed to do all of her produce shopping for under eight dollars.

“It’s fantastic,” she said. “One thing many of us have been whining about for a long time is no affordable produce within walking distance.”

The Good Food Market is open every Tuesday until September outside of the South Riverdale Community Health Centre, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.