Detwiler's Farm Market / COOPER LEVEY-BAKER
Like it is pretty much all the time, the parking lot at Detwiler's Farm Market is jam-packed. Young tattooed moms with babies strapped to their chests wander the aisles, checking out deals on produce, while retirees queue up over by the cheese and meat counter. Shoppers consult lists, check off items on their phones and swipe debit cards.
Detwiler's Farm Market / COOPER LEVEY-BAKER
Just to the east, in the Detwiler's warehouse and office building, it's no less hectic. Employees come and go, wheeling in and out with crates of fruit and vegetables. In his office, 50-year-old Henry Detwiler ("Henry Sr.," as he's referred to), rolls up a thick pad of blueprint images the size of the conference table on which it rests.
Things here are busy, and about to get busier: Those blueprints correspond to a new location Detwiler's is shooting to open this December, in the shuttered Kash n' Karry on the southeast corner of N. Lockwood Ridge Road and University Parkway. The Palmer Road Detwiler's adds up to about 5,000 square feet; the new Sarasota spot will be closer to 25,000.
Quite an upgrade from what started as just a roadside stand back in 2002, when Detwiler began selling produce at the Sutters egg farm out on Richardson Road. After moving to Fruitville Grove, then opening up the Detwiler's flagship in 2008, then expanding to Venice in 2013, the bigger new store represents the logical next step. Not that Detwiler wants to run a full-on grocery store. He has no desire to sell toilet paper. But he sees the new Detwiler's as a Fresh Market-like specialty grocery store.
One Detwiler's specialty, that keeps people coming back: local Jersey Acres raw milk and dairy products like sour cream, butter and cottage cheese, labeled as not for human consumption. Detwiler says the store is constantly fielding calls from shoppers looking for unpasteurized dairy, which he drank, too, as a boy in Pennsylvania. "I grew up with that stuff," he says. "That's all we'd drink."
Detwiler's Farm Market / COOPER LEVEY-BAKER
Detwiler's stocks a number of other locally grown or produced items, like orange juice from Arcadia's Joshua Citrus, and produce when it's in season. But as much as Detwiler would like to support local growers, he says area farmers can't meet demand. And while he'd love to sell locally raised grass-fed beef, thanks to USDA slaughtering regulations, that's tough.
So on summer days like today, you can find a ton of nice-looking inexpensive produce from places like Georgia, South Carolina and even Canada, and seafood from all over, including the incredible oysters that come out of Apalachicola. But Detwiler would like to begin sourcing more from locals, to recapture the feeling at the first farmstand he worked at, as a teenager in Pennsylvania, when they would haul fruit straight from the trees to the customers. "That's what gets me excited," he says, rhapsodizing about the juice from a just-picked peach dripping down his chin. "You couldn't stop eating them," he says.
Detwiler's current stores (where sales are "through the roof") might not offer that romantic experience right now, but Detwiler says the market's expansion is the continuation of a longtime retail dream: "That's what I wanted 30 years ago as a teenager, and it took me all this time to get it."
The flagship Detwiler's Farm Market is located at 6000 Palmer Blvd., Sarasota. The Venice location is at 1250 U.S. Highway 41 Bypass, Venice. For more information on either location, call 378-2727 or visit detwilermarket.com.
This is the 54th entry in Eat Near, a regular column dedicated to all the lovely food that folks on the Suncoast grow, raise, kill or craft. If you have an idea for someone/thing to feature, email me at eatnearsrq@gmail.com or hit me up on Twitter: @LeveyBaker.
