Past & Present: The Philly Market

Perfectly situated near the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, local farms, highways, railways, and the airport, produce naturally flows in and out of the City of Love. Philadelphia is home to 1.6 million people, with 7.2 million in the surrounding Delaware Valley.

The origins of the city’s vibrant produce trade began on Dock Street where local farmers consigned their crops to produce merchants. City leaders centralized the food trade, including produce, into the Food Distribution Center in South Philadelphia in 1959. Lasting for 52 years, the Food Distribution Center had outlived its usefulness by the turn of the twenty-first century.
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The new produce market—the Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market—opened its doors on June 5, 2011, to much fanfare. The $218 million investment, the size of 14 football fields (the equivalent of the Empire State Building on its side), the PWPM boasts an unbroken cold chain in a fully-enclosed, fully-refrigerated environment.

Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market
6700 Essington Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19153
(215) 336-3003
www.pwpm.net

This is an excerpt from the most recent Produce Blueprints quarterly journal. Click here to read the full article.