Whether you are visiting the West Side Market in Cleveland, Ohio, or the St. Lawrence Market Place in Toronto, Canada,  what makes your visit memorable and unique are the individual vendors.  

Like the special exhibits in a museum, the individual vendors at marketplaces all over the world are experts in their special merchant areas.  And, for me, that is something to appreciate and respect.

Take rice for example:  this older gentleman (I presume it is Rube - but I didn’t have time to inquire) operated a market stall about 5 feet wide by 16 feet long.  There were rice varieties of every color - black, brown, orange, white, gray…

Boy, I thought, our corporate providers are really selling us short.  Keeping us in the dark. 

We have “minute rice” and “normal rice”, short grain and long - but that’s about it.

Well, here’s Rube with about  a half a hundred varieties of rice.   Rube isn’t a corporation keeping me in the dark.  No Cargill or ADM monocultures here. 

The intellectual stimulus made my gastric juices flow. 

I had to buy some rice..

The moral of this story?

Vote proactively with your wallet to encourage individual entrepreneurs.