Small Wonders: Neighborhood Markets Offer Big Resource for Local Products

Chase adds that from the beginning, their intention was to create a place to showcase local products. “What I always said was, ‘We’re going to take ‘local’ off the sign and we’re going to put it in the store.’ That’s much more meaningful than just having the words on the brick out front.” In the market, shoppers can find local standbys from Hayden Flour Mills and Queen Creek Olive Oil, along with a wide variety of other products like Noble Bread, The Proper Beast sausages, chocolate from DNA and a wide variety of Arizona beers and wines.

In addition to pantry staples, the market carries fresh produce from small local farms including Arrandale Farms, the Chases’ operation, which is a part of Sun Produce Co-op. That makes seasonality a learning experience for some of the customers. “People will pop in and say, ‘Oh, do you have peppers?’ Well, we only carry what grows in Arizona right now. The nice part is people don’t get angry about that,” says Chase.

Sphinx Date Ranch Palm & Pantry

At the other end of the time continuum and not far from Chadwick’s on a busy section of Scottsdale Road sits Sphinx Date Company’s Palm & Pantry, one of the Valley’s historic businesses. Surrounded by strip malls, hotels and restaurants, the humble ranch house is an homage to the agricultural days long gone from Scottsdale and most of Phoenix.

While dates are the focus at Palm & Pantry, and buying them is still a must-do for visitors to the Valley, Rebecca Seitz says they also believe in supporting other local food producers. Seitz has owned the company with her mother, Sharyn, since 2012, and all of the staple items and wines in the shop are Arizona products. “We like to be able to show off locally made products to support local entrepreneurs and food producers, especially the things that are really special to our region,” she says. “We tell the story behind those products like White Sonora Wheat and cholla buds.”

Seitz adds, “It’s more than just being a market for people to get their stuff. We’re educating a lot of people when they come in here, and our heritage is what supports that.”

Sphinx Date Company was founded in the late 1920s after Roy Franklin spotted a seedling for a previously unknown date variety growing in a neighbor’s yard. He enlisted the help of Ellen Amelia Goodbody Brophy, began propagating the tree and planted a grove on her property in the Arcadia area of Phoenix. Brophy’s son Jack and Ed Peterson eventually joined Franklin in the venture. They called the date Black Sphinx, and by the 1950s the company had opened a farm stand and luncheon patio on the property. It became a hot spot for well-heeled Valley visitors, and Sphinx Date Ranch began shipping date gifts across the country to Hollywood celebrities, politicians and other members of the glitterati. But the company, deep in debt, ended up subdividing the ranch, turning it into residential lots, and moving the farm stand and mail-order business to Camelback Road.

After changing hands several times, the company moved to its current quarters decades ago, but many of the original date trees still survive in homeowners’ yards throughout the Arcadia neighborhood. According to Seitz, some of those trees are harvested by homeowners, but the company no longer grows its own products. She says they buy the bulk of their dates, including the still-limited quantity of Black Sphinx, from growers in Yuma.

The company still maintains a robust wholesale date gift business, and the retail mail-order division ramped up when tourists stopped coming during the pandemic, but Seitz wants year-round residents to know Palm & Pantry isn’t just about dates. “I think a lot of people locally might assume that we’re only dates, or that we’re a place for tourists. People don’t recognize the assortment and variety that we offer in terms of local products,” she says.

Inside the shop with the bright yellow door, shoppers will find a broad assortment of Arizona-produced pantry goods—spices, preserves and honey, snacks and sweets, and wines from many of Arizona’s best-known vintners. As an added attraction for local shoppers, Palm & Pantry is also a delivery site for Rhiba Farms’ one-time produce boxes—ordering on the Rhiba Farms website on Monday ensures a box of fresh produce will be waiting on Wednesday. “It’s an offering we started last summer, and it’s a way for people in our area to get fresh-harvested produce. It also gives Rhiba Farms [located in San Tan Valley] another location because they were seeing a decline in restaurant business,” says Seitz.