Lunada Market builds on past, with eye toward future trends
Lunada Market’s sign pays homage to the locations past. Photo
Lunada Market and Deli location have been “operating as a market under various names and owners for more than over 50 years,” according to Palos Verdes Estates records. The site was formerly Frontier Market, Moore’s Market, and Fresh & Easy. After the closing of Fresh & Easy, the site was vacant for more than a year. Jocelyn Lopez hoped to open a simple juice and smoothie bar next door to the former market in the former Poppy’s clothing store location. She put together a proposal and showed it to the building’s owner. He suggested she take the market location, instead. Lopez liked the idea and worked at local markets until she felt prepared to manage one of her own.
Lunada Market and Deli recently held a soft opening, with flexible hours that allow her to work out issues. Next week, Lopez plans to have the market fully-operational market, with juice, smoothie, and boba bars, a sandwich and boxed lunch station, and regular hours. After the market is operating smoothly, she plans to lease 1,000-square-foot Poppy location she first looked at and open a cafe there.
Lopez stocks her store with fruit and produces from farmers’ markets and Southern California growers. The majority of her meat and seafood is also locally-sourced. Lopez emphasizes community, not only with the food she sells but also with the home she hopes her market will provide. She wants first-time visitors to think that it “feels comfortable, it feels happy here, and there’s a bit of fun sprinkled throughout the store.”
Palos Verdes School Gardens executive director, Diana Heffernan-Schrader, can attest to the draw of a locally-sourced market.
“People should go to the market because that’s where they’re there offering really high-quality products,” Heffernan-Schrader said. Her appreciation for the Market resulted in a partnership between the Palos Verdes School Gardens and the Market. Heffernan-Schrader hopes the partnership will “connect our schools to the broader community through food.”
The partnership will fully start this fall when school resumes. The Lunada Bay School Garden will showcase its produce at the Market.
Although the market upholds a half century old tradition at its location, its modern direction may be what makes it’s successful.