SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ENTERPRISE : Breaking Out of Its Shell : Farmers Market Working to Shed Its Old-Fashioned Image

It was a Saturday night like any other in the past 57 years at Du-Par’s coffee shop in Farmers Market as diners dug into their chicken pot pies and plates of liver and onions.

But as the gray-haired Du-Par’s regulars looked out the window, they could catch a glimpse of something new afoot: Young couples sipped wine on a nearby patio, a quartet sang ‘60s tunes a cappella and a red-faced Stephane Strouk was frenetically turning out quiches, grilled Italian gourmet sandwiches and couscous salad at the opening of Lulu Panini, his third Farmers Market shop.

The 29-year-old entrepreneur represents the new breed of small business owners at Farmers Market. After more than six decades, the venerable Los Angeles landmark is updating its image, seeking businesses that draw younger, hipper shoppers.

The market has added two bars, hired a marketing consultant, brought in musical groups and encouraged more fashionable restaurants and shops to open. Entertainment executives now stop by the market for $168 tins of caviar, schoolchildren drop in for lectures on African American pride, and customers savor the jambalaya and raspberry pancakes at the newer restaurants.

“This area is becoming younger, more professional as people have been moving into the Los Angeles urban area,” said Hank Hilty, president of the A.F. Gilmore Co., which owns and runs the market at 3rd Street and Fairfax Avenue. “It’s been a dramatic change in demographics, and we’ve tried to address that by putting in new shops with style, design and flair.”

Three years of declining sales--the first in the history of the market--prompted the new approach, he said.

Besides its old-fashioned image, the market has been hurt by the statewide economic downturn and the earthquakes, fires, riots and other disasters that hurt tourists’ perceptions of Southern California. The market is still a major tourist attraction, but these days more are arriving in minibuses than in full-size coaches, Hilty said.

The six vacant market spaces among the market’s 110 attest to the decline, Hilty said. In years past, the market had a waiting list of entrepreneurs eager to set up stalls.

Besides tourists, Farmers Market in those days attracted tourists and affluent shoppers from nearby Hancock Park, Windsor Square and even Beverly Hills who used the market’s fish, meat and produce shops like a grocery store, he said.

Mornings at the market, such shoppers can still be found. Well-groomed women dressed in expensive blazers picking out salmon steaks and fresh strawberries stand beside camera-laden European and Asian tourists.

They and the elderly residents from the nearby Park LaBrea apartments who patronize the market are now joined by younger couples who are moving in to the sprawling complex and by entertainment industry people who have bought nearby California stucco bungalows.

To lure the newcomers, the market began running ads in free local weekly papers, on radio food programs and in movie theaters. And the Gilmore company has sought out the newer businesses such as Strouk’s, with trendier menus.

Strouk, who has worked for Xerox and helped run an art gallery in Paris, said he decided on restaurant work because his command of English was not up to those other types of jobs when he came to Los Angeles in 1992. With $30,000 of his savings, he opened a crepe shop in a 115-square-foot stall in the middle of the market a year later.

With the profit, he took over operation of the market’s cheese shop, adding 150 gourmet cheeses and caviar. Profit from that operation went into Lulu Panini, his newest restaurant.

Strouk says he works 70 to 80 hours a week but that he doesn’t mind because the market feels like home. Just as in Paris, shoppers at Farmers Market know their butcher and cheese shop owner.

“If I didn’t have the Farmers Market, I couldn’t stay in Los Angeles,” he said.

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Another business that has helped update the market is Black Orchard gift shop, situated in a separate building north of the restaurants and food stalls.

Owner Jacqueline Naipo, a former publicist for the late writer Alex Hailey, spent $50,000 in 1990 to stock a small store with African and Native American craft work and gifts. With the help of business advice from neighboring store owners, Naipo has expanded, and now children from the nearby Audubon Middle School come to her store once a year for her lectures on African American history.

“So many people opened up to me,” Naipo said. “There’s a lot of friendliness here that I love, instead of a mall where you’re just store No. 204 or something.”

Even the veterans at the market have been updating their offerings.

Bob Tusquellas, who began working in the market 42 years ago in his father’s butcher shop, now owns three businesses of his own: a seafood market, an oyster bar and a doughnut shop. He remodeled the oyster bar with modern glass display cases and eliminated fried fish in favor of salads topped with grilled seafood and shellfish. The doughnut shop offers gourmet coffee and fruit-flavored teas.

Charlie Sue Gilbert, who has run a market coffee shop for 20 years, said the clientele she serves these days is younger and that the stars who drop by are ones she doesn’t recognize.

“It used to be movie stars like Glenn Ford who came to the market all the time,” she said. “Now it’s rock stars and TV stars.”

More change could come, Hilty said. As business has picked up in the past two months, he is reviving plans to expand the north building. A controversial development project approved by the city in 1991, then shelved, will not be resubmitted, however. That plan, which called for a 700,000-square-foot addition, was shelved because the financing and development climates changed, Hilty said. Instead, the company will consider a more modest expansion of the market’s shops. Even after reducing the number of businesses from 140 to 110 to provide more space per stall, most of the restaurants are still so small that they use back kitchens on another part of the property to prepare their food.

Hilty said the main market section will remain untouched.

“The market has always been he linchpin,” Hilty said. “We want it to maintain the same charm or feel that people have enjoyed over he years.”