On Saturday morning, September 26, the San Ramon Farmers Market marked its 20th year the way it marks most Saturdays: with more than 70 growers and food vendors set up under the Bishop Ranch sun. The difference this time was a ribbon-cutting, held jointly with the San Ramon Chamber of Commerce at City Center Bishop Ranch, the market's third home since a produce stand first opened in 2006.
Most people who shop there on a given Saturday assume the market has always been exactly where it is now, tucked into the plazas and walkways of City Center. It hasn't. The market's twenty-year run has three separate addresses behind it, and the reasons it moved twice track almost exactly with how San Ramon itself changed from a business-park suburb without much of a center into a city that built one.
A market that started on an actual farm
Founder Harvindar Singh launched the market in 2006 at Forest Home Farms, the 16-acre historic park on San Ramon Valley Boulevard built around the 1917 Boone Victorian Farmhouse. The land came to the city as a gift from Ruth Quayle Boone, who donated it in memory of her husband, Travis Moore Boone, and it still functions today as a working piece of local history rather than a backdrop. The San Ramon Historical Society runs the site now, complete with a Glass House Museum and free family programming most Saturdays in August, from rope-making to a native seed swap.
For its first several years, the farmers market operated on that same ground, produce stands set up within sight of a preserved 1917 farmhouse. Then, in May 2011, it moved.
The move to an office park, then a downtown that didn't exist yet
The market relocated to Bishop Ranch 3, directly across from what was then a new development called City Center Bishop Ranch. That phrasing matters. In 2011, City Center wasn't the finished mixed-use plaza San Ramon residents know now. It was a construction project, and the market moved next to it while it was still under construction. The market's own materials from that period describe the shift as becoming part of "City Center's renewal in the heart of San Ramon," which was less a description of where the market had landed than a bet on where the city was headed.
The bet paid off slowly. It took eight more years, through the buildout of City Center's retail, offices, and public plazas, before the market made its second move in 2019, this time into the finished development itself. That relaunch came with what organizers called a renewed focus on local growers and artisan producers, plus live music and space built for people to linger rather than just shop.
So the timeline runs: a historic farm from 2006 to 2011, an office park across from a construction site from 2011 to 2019, and a finished downtown plaza from 2019 to now. The market didn't grow into City Center. It arrived before the finished development did, waiting for the rest of the city to catch up to the corner it had already claimed.
What that history changed about the market itself
The scale is different too. A market that began as a produce stand now draws more than 70 local growers, artisan food producers, and small businesses every Saturday, according to the market's own count. That is not a rounding difference from a farm-stand start, and it lines up with what San Ramon was doing over those same twenty years: adding the office towers, apartments, and retail that turned Bishop Ranch from a business park into something closer to a downtown.
Walk the market now and the range shows. Starter Bakery brings its seasonal kouign-amann. Alexandre Family Farm sells organic A2/A2 dairy. Smit Family Farms, a longtime presence, specializes in certified organic apples, including a late-harvest variety called Aztec Fuji, a cross between Red Delicious and Ralls Janet that most grocery produce sections don't carry. Honey comes from Walid Bees and Gerard'Z Honeybees. Seasonal fruit rotates through Triple Delight Blueberries, K&J Orchards, R&D Farms, Sunrise Farms, Medina Berry, KEM Organic Farms, and Diaz Farms. Coffee comes from The Prominent Roast.
Then there's Medrano's Flowers, run by David Medrano, who spent nearly 15 years working his way up at a floral wholesaler, starting by washing buckets, before launching his own flower farm in 2001. Two decades later it's a family operation, with his wife Rosa working the stand alongside him, growing more than 60 flower varieties year-round.
The Saturday routine underneath the anniversary
Food trucks and street vendors round out the market on a rotating basis. Momo Cook and Crazy Empanada's show up most weeks. Cousins Maine Lobster parks there on the first Saturday of every month. Beyond that, the lineup runs through Papa Dumplings, Ofa's Island BBQ, Wrap It Up Dosai, Cali Crab BBQ Oysters & More, Delicioso Cali, Chef's Hit the Streets for poke, Saffron Paella, Bad Morning Bakery's flatbread pizzas, and Kettle Pop.
None of that existed at the Forest Home Farms location in the market's early years. The variety is a direct byproduct of the second move, into a plaza built with foot traffic and gathering space in mind rather than a farm's open field.
For residents planning a Saturday, City Center Bishop Ranch sits close enough to the Iron Horse Trail that a walk or bike ride from the surrounding neighborhoods is a realistic way to get there without adding to the parking lot crowd. The trail runs the length of San Ramon and connects directly into the Bishop Ranch corridor, one of the few stretches of the city where a car-free Saturday morning errand is actually practical.
What the anniversary is actually marking
Twenty years and three addresses is not a story about a market that stayed the same while San Ramon changed around it. It's a story about a market that moved twice, first to Bishop Ranch 3 across from City Center while it was still under construction, then into the finished development. Forest Home Farms still exists, still preserved, still hosting its own weekend programming as a separate piece of the city's history. The market just isn't there anymore. It's two moves and two decades removed from where it started, and the ribbon cut this September marked those two decades.
If Saturday mornings at City Center are already part of how you spend your weekend, Rathore Homes has spent plenty of time in this stretch of San Ramon and is always glad to hear what's kept people coming back for twenty years. Let's Connect.
