Taking a Stand for Produce : The popular Jammin’ Annie’s hopes to stay at its Agoura Hills site past Sept. 30.

Can a simple produce stand make it in an upscale suburban community? Can it compare with a super Vons and Ralphs just up the road? Can it survive the endless red tape in a city known for its strict standards and codes? Just maybe.

When Anne Stassart discovered an empty Christmas tree shack along the Ventura Freeway in Agoura Hills, she imagined it could be her own fruit and vegetable stand--and since February it has.

“This place is a spot of freshness in a stale world,” said Carol Gottlieb of Agoura Hills, an underwriter who at the end of her workday phones in her order to Jammin’ Annie’s. “I’ve never gotten anything here that wasn’t good.”

The Agoura Hills site was chosen because Stassart “thought shoppers would want farm-fresh produce. It’s like going to a farmers’ market every day. People don’t have to wait in lines like they do at bigger stores.”

The stand, just north of the freeway on Canwood Street west of Kanan Road, is used by Agoura High School students as a Christmas tree lot in December. When the Christmas season ended last winter, Stassart approached the city of Agoura Hills to inquire about making the site useful year-round.

“I told the city I’d love to open a produce stand,” Stassart said. “But I was informed that such stands aren’t in the zoning book. I said, ‘What I’ve got is special and you guys need to make an exception and see the value of what I can bring to Agoura.’ ”

Doug Hooper, assistant planner for Agoura Hills, said Stassart has a temporary permit good until Sept. 30.

“I’m not sure we’d grant another temporary use of the site,” Hooper said of the lot, which also supports a small herd of sheep. “We’d recommend she apply for a permanent-use permit, which would involve paving her dirt parking lot, submitting a building plan and having it go through our architectural review board. She is really popular, though.”

Hooper said the city’s zoning codes permit a farmers’ market, but it would have to be one where several suppliers meet together, not a single stand such as Jammin’ Annie’s. No farmers’ markets have been proposed within the city, he said.

To stock the stand, Stassart, 29, and her partner Syndi McNeil, 30, make produce runs every morning. One of the two drives to the Grand Central Public Market in downtown Los Angeles, sampling exotics such as mangoes, papayas and bananas, and bringing them back to the stand. The other visits growers in Ventura County for berries, oranges, lettuce and other locally grown produce. Since there is no refrigeration at the stand, old produce is replaced daily.

They stock the Agoura Hills stand as well as one in Ventura, work each stand during the day, make jam and do the books by night.

Stassart started the original Jammin’ Annie’s stand in Ventura about four years ago. Her husband, Fred, had sold produce to Malibu and Los Angeles-area restaurants for about 20 years, and she saw it as natural to bring the same restaurant-quality fruit and vegetables to her stand. The jam, made from fruit that is not sold during the day, also can be purchased at both of her locations. Coogies restaurant in Malibu features the jams with its breakfast menu.

“It’s nice to get fresh produce with suggestions on the daily good buys,” Nanette Yaros of Agoura Hills said. “I always end up buying too much when I come here. I say I’m going to jog from home, but how can I run with a watermelon?”

Stassart hopes the community response will persuade Agoura Hills to grant another temporary permit. She would like to remain on the land until it is sold. The property, which belongs to longtime Agoura Hills landowner Patricia Kanan, has been for sale for years.

Stassart has fenced a portion of the lot for a community garden, where people are invited to grow fruits and vegetables. She also encourages locals whose gardens produce too much bounty to bring their excess to her stand to sell. She uses a loose bartering system to pay them when their bounty sells.

Said Malibu Lake resident Kateri Alexander: “It’s so refreshing to have some country life out here so you don’t feel like you’re living in tract land.”

Where and When

Location: Jammin’ Annie’s, 29353 Canwood St.

Hours: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily; phone orders also taken.

Call: (818) 879-5440.