The forageSF folks are receiving some coverage about their underground market in the New York Times and in other publications. Their mission is about reconnecting the urban SF dweller to their wild foods and the market seems to have grown out of the need to have a place to encourage more knowledge, more new items AND because they could not get in to markets because of the rules about “grow it to sell it”. I wonder, how many markets around the country would have flatly said no to these foragers?
As some of you know, I am fascinated by the relationship between CSAs and public markets, and have noticed that many CSAs end up operating as a type of market, and I am always curious if the opposite is true too. This one seems to be moving more in the direction of the market being more useful for their work as it evolves.

What’s interesting about this is the idea is they seem to rate new vendors highest (based on the quotes in the story.) So, the usual criteria of favoring return vendors is much less useful to them, which tells me they have a very good sense of their 4Ms (mission, management, marketing and measurement).
On top of that, they have a free membership that you need to sign up for to get into the market, as you need to check off their hold harmless as a shopper so it really seems like the are dotting their is and crossing their ts…

So I wonder if this is a new typology of market (in marketumbrella.org’s spectrum of market analysis we are collecting with the Market Portraits).

They are definitely an organization to watch.