"They do not have to go find the farmers market at 9 a.m. every Saturday," Lexus Chatagnier told 225 Baton Rouge.
In the report, Lexus Chatagnier described the problem she was trying to solve when she and her husband Jacob opened a market of their own on Airline Highway this summer. It sounds like a small complaint. If you've lived in Prairieville long enough to know the rhythm of a Saturday morning here, it isn't small at all.
The Saturday Morning Economy
For years, buying local at these markets has meant planning around weekend hours. Riverside Farmers Market of Louisiana sets up under a stand of live oaks on Manny Guitreau Road, and the crowd shows up early, roughly eight or nine in the morning, because the good eggs and the fresh bread don't last past the first hour. The Ascension Parish Library sends its bookmobile out to meet shoppers there on market days. It's a real gathering, not a photo opportunity.
A few miles down Airline Highway, The Flea Market of Louisiana runs a different kind of Saturday, sprawling and loud, with more than 1,200 reviews describing a food court, a wall of produce stands, and enough booths that regulars say you can't get through the whole thing in one visit. It's open weekends only, and it rewards people who show up with a full morning to spend.
Both are genuinely good options, but their schedules are concentrated on the weekend. For a weekday stop for local meat, local honey, or a loaf of sourdough from someone who baked it that week, neither market is an option.
What Actually Opened on Airline Highway
As 225 Baton Rouge reported, Chatagnier Community Market opened this August in a 1,300-square-foot storefront that used to be a dance apparel store, on Airline Highway near the line where Prairieville gives way to Gonzales. Ask three neighbors which town it's in and you'll get three different answers, which tells you something about how this corridor actually works. People here don't think in city-limit lines when they're deciding where to buy dinner.
The Chatagniers built the market after their own frustration with sourcing local food. They had started hosting pop-up markets on their family farm, but zoning restrictions shut those down, which pushed them toward a commercial storefront instead. The response surprised them. More than 200 vendors applied for space, and the market opened with 60 curated ones.
What's inside doesn't look like a flea market or a folding-table farm stand. It's arranged more like a small grocery store, with Sagrera Farms beef and pork, honey from J&J Apiary, stone ground grits from Bonnecaze Farms, dairy from Feliciana's Best Creamery, and mushroom tinctures from Mycocentrics sitting on shelves next to fresh eggs and jars of preserves. A rotating pop-up cart inside the store brings in daily vendors like Wild Rise Sourdough Co., Fleur-de-Licious Bakery and Treats, Cakes and Catering by Maria, and Pop's Basting Sauce.
Chatagnier has been clear about what she was and wasn't trying to build.
"I want somebody who really cares about the products they're making," Chatagnier told 225 Baton Rouge.
That's a curation standard, reflected in a tight, rotating list of producers who reapply for shelf space.
The Six-Day Difference
Riverside Farmers Market runs Saturday mornings, plus the third Sunday of the month. The Flea Market of Louisiana runs Saturday and Sunday only. Chatagnier Community Market runs six days a week:
- Tuesday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
- Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
- Sunday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- Closed Monday
That schedule means a Tuesday afternoon grocery run for local pork or a Thursday evening stop for fresh eggs is now possible in a way it simply wasn't six months ago. The two Saturday institutions aren't going anywhere and they still offer things Chatagnier doesn't, more live music and a wider mix of crafts and vintage finds at the flea market, a bigger rotating produce table at Riverside. The six-day schedule adds weekday hours alongside the existing weekend options.
What's Actually on the Shelves, and What's Coming
Right now the store leans toward shelf-stable goods, meat, dairy, eggs, baked goods, and gifts like leatherwork, candles, and soaps. Chatagnier has said fresh produce is next, once the second phase of the concept, a commercial kitchen, comes online. Business in the first weeks has apparently outpaced the space itself. The couple is already looking at a location roughly three times the current size for later this year, which suggests the six-day model is doing what they hoped.
Top sellers so far are the basics: meat, eggs, and dairy, the kind of staples that used to require either a weekend trip or a drive out to whatever farm happened to be selling that week. Chatagnier has talked about her own history of sourcing beef in Ethel and pork in Livingston before deciding to put it all under one roof in her own backyard.
Grand Opening, Saturday, September 19
If you haven't stopped in yet, the market is planning a proper grand opening on Saturday, September 19, with an outdoor vendor fair in the parking lot expected to bring in 50 to 70 vendors, well beyond the 60 already stocked inside. It's a good excuse to see the full range of what's available in one visit, and a good comparison point against the Saturday crowd at Riverside or the weekend sprawl at the flea market down the road. The address is 14210 Airline Highway, in the stretch most people just call the highway between Prairieville and Gonzales, whichever side of the line they happen to live on.
None of this changes where you'll find your Saturday morning eggs. It just means you can now pick them up on a weekday, too.
Jodie B. Strain has spent more than two decades getting to know the small stuff that makes Prairieville feel like home, including which market has the good sourdough on a Tuesday. If you're settling into this corner of Ascension Parish, or just want to talk about what's changing around town, Let's Connect.
