Which farmers market are you going to this weekend?
For years that question didn't need asking. Sunday morning in Encino meant one place: the ONEgeneration market off Victory Boulevard, tucked between White Oak and Balboa, running since before most of the neighborhood's newer transplants moved in. Now there's a second option, on a different day, on a different street, run by a different kind of organization entirely. The choice isn't just about which one has better peaches. It's a small window into two competing ideas about what a Valley boulevard is for.
The Saturday newcomer
The newer market runs Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., at 16206 Ventura Blvd near Woodley Avenue, and it's certified through the California Department of Food and Agriculture's statewide farmers market registry. The operator, Hello Farmer, doesn't run a single Encino stand and stop there. The same company also runs markets in Tarzana, Woodland Hills, the NoHo Arts District, and a Wednesday evening slot in Sylmar. Encino is one stop on a route, not a standalone civic project.
There's a second detail worth sitting with. Hello Farmer also promotes this same Saturday slot under a different name: Street Food Festival Encino, at the identical address and hours. That's not a scheduling coincidence. It signals a market built around prepared food stalls and vendor variety as much as produce stands, closer to a weekly food festival than the produce-first model longtime Valley residents grew up with.
The Sunday fixture
The older market hasn't moved and hasn't rebranded. ONEgeneration's Sunday market runs 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., year round, at 17400 Victory Blvd, and it functions as a fundraising engine as much as a shopping trip. Per the market's own listing, it draws more than 30 farmers, more than 25 food vendors, and more than 10 crafters each week, with a percentage of every dollar spent going toward ONEgeneration's senior services and community programs. This is a nonprofit market with a single location and a mission attached to every transaction, not a franchise expanding across the Valley one boulevard at a time.
Two logics, two streets
Here's the part that actually matters if you live here: these two markets aren't competing for the same dollar so much as answering two different questions about what a weekend in Encino should look like.
Victory Boulevard sits on the quieter, more residential side of that split, and the Sunday market's identity leans into that. It's slower, larger, older, and its economics are built around community support rather than retail traffic. Ventura Boulevard is the commercial spine, the street where Encino's restaurants and shops actually compete for foot traffic, and a Saturday market planted directly on that strip is optimized for exactly that kind of pull.
The timing lines up with what's happening a few blocks down Ventura. This past March, Popular opened at 18047 Ventura Blvd, the seventh concept from Tel Aviv Restaurant Group, led by executive chef Dor Priezler with a seafood-forward Mediterranean menu that includes a Fish Cigar, a crispy pastry filled with branzino, herbs, chili, and lemon zest, served with sumac yogurt. A boulevard adding a chef-driven restaurant in March and a retail-format farmers market on the same stretch isn't two unrelated stories. It's one story about Ventura Boulevard positioning itself as a destination strip rather than a pass-through, with Saturday morning now part of that same commercial rhythm.
The crossroads that predates both of them
If you want the longer view, walk to the corner of Balboa and Ventura, where Los Encinos State Historic Park has sat since long before either market existed. The park occupies five acres around a reservoir shaped like a Spanish guitar, fed by natural springs that made this one of the first inhabited areas of the San Fernando Valley. The Tongva lived at the village of Siutcanga on this site, and the park still includes the original nine-room De La Osa Adobe, built in 1849, according to the history documented in Ventura Boulevard's own record.
That corner has been a meeting point for longer than either farmers market has existed, which makes the current split feel less like a modern retail trend and more like the latest version of an old pattern. People have been gathering at this crossing of water, road, and commerce for centuries. The current version just comes with produce stands and a street food festival banner.
Making the two days work together
If you're new to the choice, or you've just never bothered to compare them, here's a straightforward way to think about the weekend now:
- Saturday, Ventura Boulevard corridor. Hit Hello Farmer between 9 and 2 for prepared food and vendor variety, then walk the same stretch to see what else has opened. Popular is worth a dinner reservation later that evening if you want to close the loop on the boulevard's newer dining identity.
- Sunday, Victory Boulevard. Get to ONEgeneration before 10 for the widest produce selection, since a market with more than 30 farmers moves fast on peak summer fruit. It's the slower, residential version of the same morning.
- Either day, Los Encinos. The park sits at Balboa and Ventura, an easy stop before or after the Saturday market, and it's the one fixed point that's been part of this corridor's identity the entire time.
None of this requires picking a side permanently. The more interesting fact is that Encino now supports two farmers markets with genuinely different reasons for existing, on two different streets, serving two different versions of what a Valley weekend can look like.
What this actually signals
Watch what happens next rather than what's already here. Hello Farmer is a multi-site operator with markets across Tarzana, Woodland Hills, Sylmar, and the NoHo Arts District, and Encino is simply one stop in a growing footprint. ONEgeneration has no plan to expand beyond its one Sunday morning on Victory Boulevard because expansion isn't the point. One model scales. The other stays rooted. Having both running at once, on the same weekend, in the same small stretch of the Valley, is a more interesting fact about Encino right now than either market is on its own.
If you're weighing what a specific pocket of Encino actually feels like day to day, not just on a spreadsheet of comparable sales, the team at Jonah Wilson Partners spends real time in these neighborhoods and is glad to talk through what we've seen firsthand. Contact us anytime.
