Our Story

Founding story

Braeswood Farmers Market started in August 2019, at the corner of Chimney Rock and South Braeswood — one folding table’s worth of ambition, at a moment when a lot of Houston was still figuring out how to rebuild after Hurricane Harvey. Mike Babajanov, a native Houstonian with a marketing degree from the University of Houston, had spent his career helping other people’s businesses grow. He decided to try growing something of his own: a market that treated neighbors like neighbors, not foot traffic.

That instinct showed up early and often. When the market set up in Montrose in 2020, Mike put it plainly: “The Montrose area — it doesn’t get enough love, but we want to show our support” for the neighborhood and its LGBTQ+ residents. It’s the same instinct behind the market’s own name for its long-term vision — the “Love Thy Neighbor Market” — and it’s the reason the market earned Texas Certified Farmers Market Association A-certification along the way: not just fresh produce, but a market that actually behaves like it belongs to the neighborhood it’s in.

From one folding table to three markets

Markets move. Ours has, more than once — and every time, the name stayed the same because the market was never really about one address. Today, Braeswood Farmers Market runs three very different markets, each built around the people who actually show up:

• La Centerra at Cinco Ranch, in Katy — our weekly flagship. Every Sunday, 11am to 3pm, rain or shine. It’s the one that doesn’t move and doesn’t skip weeks, and it’s where most of our reputation was built.
• Memorial Hermann — Texas Medical Center, in Houston — a weekday market (currently landing on Tuesdays) built for people on a shift, not a leisurely Sunday. Because hospital schedules shift more than most, we keep the current day and hours on our live calendar rather than printing a promise here we might have to break.
• Houston Museum of Natural Science — a smaller, monthly market on the first Sunday, worth planning a museum morning around.

Three markets, three different rhythms, one market run the same way at all of them.

A note on Beechnut

If you remember us from our original Beechnut / South Braeswood location — that market has closed. It’s not running anymore, and we’re not pretending otherwise. La Centerra at Cinco Ranch is now our weekly Sunday market, and it’s where we’d point you if Beechnut is the market you’re trying to find again.

Credibility

Along the way, Braeswood Farmers Market was named a Houston Chronicle “Best of the Best” finalist — recognition we’d rather earn every single Sunday than just print once. It’s also where “Houston’s Kindest Farmers Market” comes from: not a slogan we picked off a shelf, but a description of the thing we’re actually trying to be at every market, every week.