145-147 Farmer's Market
W - F: 8- 6, Sa: 6- 6 Sun: 11 - 4

Some shoppers swear they've heard a ballpark vendor at Findlay Market, yelling "cold beer here!" They're right about the vendor - he's Mike Heminghaus - but wrong about the beer. Mike's sells produce. The jokes are free.

Mike got his start as a kid in Somerset, New Jersey, selling bananas with his buddy Stanley Russo, whose father drove a Chiquita truck. On Saturdays, Mr. Russo dropped the boys off at a flea market to sell his ripest bananas. At the end of the day, when Mr. Russo picked them up, the boys owed him a fixed amount for their inventory and the rest was profit.

On their first day they had high hopes as they set up shop with the banana boxes. Since they could charge what they wanted for the bananas, the sky was the limit! Mr. Russo didn't say anything at the end of that first day when he picked up Mike, Stan, and all the leftover bananas. They lost money after they paid Mr. Russo his share, but vowed that next week would be different. They would price the bananas to move. That week they sold out in an hour and had to sit around for the rest of the day waiting for Mr. Russo. It was as bad as losing money. Eventually, however, they got the hang of things and ran that little business for a year and a half.

Mike's first high school job was in the produce department of a grocery store. He remembers his first day starting off great. The store manager introduced him to the produce manager, who said, "If I get one more Mike, I'm outta here!" Three other kids, all named Mike, also worked in produce.

The four Mikes got along great, helping each other through thick and thin, and "helping" customers when the produce department's phone rang. Most of the time it was someone calling to find out the price of something. If one of the Mikes answered the phone, the conversation sounded like this: "How much is your broccoli?" "Our broccoli is $3.89 today." "But it's only 50 cents at the other stores!" "Well, our broccoli is from Brazil, and they're having big monkey problems there right now." The manager was none the wiser to the real monkey problems.

The Mikes were actually good employees. They earned the manager's trust well enough that one of them was allowed to use the store after hours for a film class project. At the time, the movie Apocalypse Now was number one at the box office then. The film project was a movie called Asparagus Now, about a vegetable world that came alive when the store closed.

Mike has been a Findlay Market merchant since 1995. His employees, Ron and Judy Roth, are from a family of ten kids who grew up at the market helping their father, Mr. Roth, with his produce stand. Two other Roth siblings, George and Debbie, are still at the market too, at Elmer Simpson's produce stand.