On a normal Sunday, the lot at 900 Saddletree Court fills up before ten. Not for a council meeting or a permit hearing, but for grapefruit, brisket rub, and a booth of fermented pickles that half the regulars now drive across town for. Anyone who has lived in Shavano Park more than a season knows the routine. Turn off NW Military Highway at De Zavala, park wherever the trucks and minivans have already claimed a spot, and walk into a parking lot that has, for four hours a week, stopped being City Hall's parking lot.
What fewer people realize is that this same lot pulled off something no other patch of asphalt in Shavano Park has managed. It beat out farmers markets with bigger footprints and longer histories across San Antonio for a single citywide title, and it did it while running out of a city small enough to walk across in an afternoon.
A Big Win From A Small Footprint
In 2025, readers of San Antonio Current voted The Market at Shavano Park the city's Best Farmers Market. That is a meaningful win in a metro area with a deep bench of Sunday markets, including the long-running one at Alamo Quarry Market in Alamo Heights, the downtown draw at Legacy Park, and the monthly gathering at PRESS Coffee in Castle Hills. Shavano Park itself covers about 1.77 square miles and counts roughly 3,300 residents across some 1,263 single-family homes, according to the city's own figures. A market operating out of a town that size took the top spot over competitors rooted in far larger, far more visible parts of San Antonio.
That is not a coincidence of good produce. It is what happens when a market builds a following one Sunday at a time until the following outgrows the neighborhood it started in.
It Was Not Always Here
The market's roots are not in Shavano Park at all. Founders Brook and David Richie, who also run Bee's Wellness Café elsewhere in San Antonio, started as vendors themselves, hauling their own products from market to market before they ever managed one. In 2020, when the manager of the Live Oak Market fell ill during the pandemic, David stepped in to keep things running. What came out of that improvisation started small, just five vendors under Brook and David's care, before it grew past forty regulars at its Live Oak location.
When a construction project eventually took over that lot, the Richies needed a new home. They found it at Shavano Park's own City Hall, where the market has now run every Sunday for more than four years. The market residents treat as a fixture of their own city actually arrived here as a displaced tenant from across town, and it outgrew its old address the same way it is now outgrowing its reputation as a small local secret.
Who's Behind The Tables This Season
The vendor roster changes week to week, but a handful of names have become the reason regulars show up on time.
- Twisted Lizard Mercantile sells small-batch chili and brisket rubs from Mary and Jim Thompson, developed through years of competitive chili cookoffs and named for a favorite stretch of Terlingua.
- Honey Sol Café is the market's exclusive coffee vendor, built by Christina and Kathleen into a loyal following in just over a year.
- Pucker Up! brings Lydia Gonzalez's fermented pickles, a line that started in a home kitchen before it ever had a booth.
- Sunflour & Crumb covers the baked goods table that regulars now treat as a non-negotiable stop.
- Craft Manor gives kids a mobile craft studio courtesy of Tam Armstrong, keeping them busy with slime and seasonal projects while parents shop.
- Aguilar Farms supplies grapefruit and apples from a family that has worked land in Atascosa County for more than 80 years.
- A lavender farm out of Yancey, run by veterans Ann and Rob Karns, brings 1,500 lavender plants, homemade ice cream, live music from their musician son Will, and on a good Sunday, a few emus.
That range, from chili rubs to fermented pickles to lavender ice cream, is part of why the market reads less like a produce stand and more like a rotating cast that people show up to see as much as shop.
The Rhythm, If You Haven't Been Yet
The market runs every Sunday, year round, from 10 in the morning until 2 in the afternoon. Parking is free, the layout is compact enough to cover in under an hour, and the lot sits close enough to the surrounding hike and bike trails and a large children's playground that a market stop rarely stands alone. Families push strollers between booths, dogs get walked on leash past the produce tables, and enough of the same faces return each week that vendors greet regulars by name rather than by order number.
None of that requires planning ahead. It is the kind of Sunday that happens whether or not anyone marks it on a calendar, which is probably why so many residents describe it as something they do rather than something they attend.
Small City, Loud Sunday
There is a pattern worth noticing here. Shavano Park is a city built around privacy, mature trees, and quiet residential streets, the kind of place that rarely advertises itself loudly. Yet its one weekly public gathering just beat out markets from much bigger, much louder parts of San Antonio for a citywide title. That contrast, a small footprint producing an outsized result, says something true about the city beyond any one Sunday. It rewards people who show up consistently, whether that is a vendor building a following one week at a time or a resident who has quietly figured out which booth to hit first.
If you already live here, you likely know this pattern better than any outsider could. If you are still learning the rhythms of Shavano Park, the market is as good a place as any to start.
Shawn Alvarez works and lives in this same stretch of northwest San Antonio and enjoys pointing neighbors, new and longtime, toward the details that make a place feel like home rather than just an address. For more of these local reads, or if buying, selling, or renting in Shavano Park is on your mind, reach out to Shawn Alvarez, your trusted real estate partner.
