Our story begins in the bustling Rockridge district of Oakland, where siblings Sara, Tony and Peter Wilson designed and built Rockridge Market Hall in 1986. They envisioned a European-style marketplace where people could do all of their food shopping in one place. The Wilsons filled the market stalls with a variety of vendors who shared their interest in selling the best quality foods: a bakery, café, wine seller, fishmonger, butcher, produce store, even a flower shop. At the heart of it all was The Pasta Shop (now Market Hall Foods) with its shelves full of handcrafted fresh pasta, tempting prepared foods, cheeses cut to order and specialty groceries for cooks.
Rockridge Market Hall quickly became a community gathering place and a cornerstone of the neighborhood, as it remains today. The Pasta Shop was such a success that the Wilsons opened a second location on Berkeley’s 4th Street in 1996. Then, nearly 10 years ago, we created markethallfoods.com as an online source for all things Market Hall.
Many things have changed since we first opened—back then, Jarlsberg was the hottest cheese around and you had to look hard to find fine Italian olive oil. But Market Hall Foods is unaltered in the essentials: We are still a family-owned company. The same core businesses continue to cook, pour and sell a variety of exceptional products every day from their stalls in Oakland. And Market Hall Foods remains a hub for the best foods from the Bay Area and around the world.