Peddlers and retail stores were supplied by the city's markets, whose nearness to the Italian communities made it possible for owners to travel to the markets themselves and shop for the best deals or the most desirable produce (or sometimes the least, if they hoped to sell it cheaply). Chicago had two main produce markets: South Water Street Market, located at the north end of the downtown area and the Haymarket on Randolph Street on the Near West Side.

Italians, operating out of South Water Street Market, were prominent in the wholesale supply of produce to the city. The Market had begun as a group of commission houses in the 1860s before railroad shipments led to growth of a national market with dozens of wholesalers dealing in produce from California, Florida, and as far away as Latin America. Italian immigrants to the east and Midwest generally shunned farming, preferring the sociable closeness of city life to the isolation of American farms and the quick wages of the cities to the slow realization of an investment in farming. However, Italians who migrated to the South and West Coast entered farming and increased the supply of Italian-preferred products in the United States. [106]

As historian Donna Gabaccia has noted, the growth, production, and distribution of fruit was one of the most successful of Italian businesses and Italian immigrants can claim creation of the produce distribution system of the United States in the early twentieth century. Handling products that were often not inherently ethnic, Italian networks of growers, processors, distributors, and retailers were able to appeal, not only to compatriot consumers, but to the wider population. [107]

After the turn of the century, Italians gradually lost their dominance of the fruit peddling business in Chicago to the Greeks, newer immigrant arrivals. Italians dominated the South Water Street market, however, where their wholesaling and commission houses became firmly established and successful. In 1918, the street was lined with brick stores in which the ground floor acted as a salesroom, the second floor as general offices, and the basement and upper floors as storage and space for packaging and processing. Fruit and vegetable dealers clustered in the eastern part of the market, while meat, poultry and dairy sales occurred at the western end. [108]

Italian peddlers and shopkeepers purchased their wares from compatriots, who were early entrants into the wholesale supply of fruits to the city. Although Chicago's Italian population was overwhelmingly Southern Italian by the turn of the century, it was the earlier small migration of Northern Italians who initiated the connection between Italians and the fruit business. In 1928, one Northern Italian, whose father came to Chicago in 1852, explained the naturalness of Italians entry into this line: "I believe the reason so many Italians began in the fruit business was because Italy is a land of fruit. Until about twenty-five years ago the United States raised no lemons or oranges and we imported all of them from Italy." [109]

Many wholesalers began as simple peddlers or fruit stand owners. John Garibaldi, one of the city's most prominent wholesalers, was a horse and wagon fruit vendor in the Italian community near Illinois and Franklin. After acquiring substantial real estate holdings following the Chicago Fire, he was able to establish the commission firm of Garibaldi and Cuneo, one of the earliest of the fruit commission houses to become prominent on South Water Street. Garibaldi became president of the wholesale merchants association, a position he held until his death in 1929. Other Italian firms also became successful in the city. Ginocchio and Costa, Cuneo Brothers, Otto Annoreno and Company, and the Chicago branch of the DiGiogio Fruit corporation were among the prominent names that helped cement the association of Italians with the fruit business in the public mind. [110]

Thirty businesses were located in Haymarket Square in 1892, including 2 Italian firms. By about 1913, buyers could also purchase from cash and carry wholesalers who sold advertised brands and staples at a cut-rate price on West Randolph Street. By 1918, the Haymarket had grown from its original two-block area to a five-block conglomeration composed of commission stores in buildings lining the street and rows of three to four hundred wagons, which often arrived the night before to gain a choice location from which to sell their home grown vegetables and fruits. In the late 1920s, at least 29 Italian owned produce merchants had addresses on Randolph Street. [112]

While the market sold mainly to grocers, small jobbers, restaurant buyers and peddlers, consumers also made an appearance. Lina Tarabori, who lived at 24th and Oakley, recalled,

We always had fruit, because my dad, along with a group of other men in the neighborhood that were in the same position he was in would go to the Randolph Street Market and buy a bushel of apples, a bushel of pears and everything in big quantities. They'd come home, they'd split them up. Each one would pay his share and we'd have fruit in the house.

For families with less money to spend the market served another purpose. Mary Candice often accompanied her mother to the Haymarket, timing their arrival for right before closing in order to take advantage of the lowered prices from farmers anxious to dispose of their perishable goods. [113]

Attempts to create a real consumer farmers' market, such as the effort to open one at an abandoned ballpark on the Near West Side or on Halsted Street in the Stockyards district, were unsuccessful and most city consumers tended to rely on peddlers or neighborhood stores rather than a trip to the market. Smaller outlying markets existed in Englewood, Kennisington, and on the North, Northwest and Southwest Sides of the city but they tended to be supplied with goods from South Water Street, rather than from independent producers. The Maxwell Street Market, located in the Jewish Community on the Near West Side and adjacent to the Taylor Street Italian area, was known for its variety of goods rather than its fresh produce. Yet, it carried some foodstuffs from the Randolph Street market and in 1928, the Chicago Daily News reported, "Each passing breeze wafts a rich emulsion of the odors of poultry, carrots, day-before-yesterday's spinach, fresh fish, garlic, cheese and sausage." [114]