Fears that the greengrocer’s stall in Rye’s Thursday market by the station might disappear at Christmas have evaporated, with the welcome news that Steve Moore is to continue well into the new year.
Aged 59, he had planned to sell up and retire to Chile, where he has bought a soft fruit farm but that’s on hold for a while at least. Steve has been coming to market for 18 years: “it’s very friendly, and the customers are almost like a family”, he says. People come for the bargains and the quality of the produce. “Where else can you buy 30 avocados for a couple of pounds for example”, said one.
Steve was born in Northampton, but spent his early childhood in Wuppertal, West Germany, learning German as his first language. He learned to appreciate the German love of order and method and these have influenced him in his business dealings. Each morning, he is up by 1:30am and is always busy. He’s a well-known figure at New Covent Garden vegetable market in London, where he’s been buying for 40 years.
His family moved to England and Steve attended school in Folkestone, but left without formal qualifications. His father established himself as a wholesaler of fruit and vegetables and the family owned a couple of shops where Steve learned how to buy and sell and turn a profit before supermarkets started to take away their trade.
He tells with pride how he sold 1,040 boxes of tomatoes in a single day. He closed the shops and turned towards open markets.
He ran a stall in Brick Lane, London for seven years, before branching out into other towns in Kent. He and his family have stalls in Tonbridge, Ashford, Whitstable and Tenterden, besides Rye.
Steve Moore is not a typical family man and has seen much of the world. He has 10 children, one in New Zealand, some in Chile and others in England working in the same line of business. One of his children he brought up himself as a single parent. He has been a teetotaller, he says, all his life. He is clearly drawn to Chile, where his partner Nicolina is a street artist in Valparaiso. Meanwhile, however, here in Rye we continue to enjoy coming to his market stall of a Thursday morning.
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Photos: Kenneth Bird
What an interesting article: sounds a great life. I must say his stall is the only thing worth visiting in Rye Thursday market – brilliant produce and great prices, if that goes it will be a sorry place indeed …