Out on the Strip: your weekly guide to local produce, southern staples, and what to find at the Mauldin Open Air Market

 By Brenda Stewart Golden Strip Publisher

There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over a person somewhere between the parking lot and the front counter at 699 E. Butler Road. No automatic sliding doors. No fluorescent hum. No cart with a wobbly wheel. Just gravel underfoot, flags snapping along the property line, and the aroma of ripe cantaloupe and warm boiled peanuts drifting out to meet you before you even step inside.

Welcome to the Mauldin Open Air Market.

Perched at the corner of East Butler and Bridges roads—directly across from Mauldin High School and neighboring the Ray W. Hopkins Senior Center the market has anchored the daily rhythm of this community for more than four decades. Traffic has multiplied, subdivisions have steadily filled in open pastures, and the nearby interstate interchange grows busier by the month. Yet the market remains exactly where it has always been, doing what it does best.

The backstory: blue tarps, peach orchards, and fierce resolve

Founder Joel Ann Chandler—affectionately known across the Upstate as “JoJo” or the “Peach Queen”—grew up working this very soil. Her roots trace back to her family’s farming heritage on land her grandfather assembled piece by piece to cultivate peaches, cotton, and livestock.

In the early 1980s, Chandler began selling homegrown watermelons and tomatoes beneath simple boards and blue tarps. Customer demand took off almost immediately, transforming a makeshift roadside stand into the permanent, open-air fixture that shoppers rely on today.

The ‘why’ behind the counter

For Chandler, running the market has always been about stewardship, faith, and maintaining a personal connection to the land. She has long credited her faith, top-tier fresh produce, and old-fashioned hospitality for sustaining the business across decades of regional growth.

That hands-on dedication remains front and center. Chandler still travels regularly to the state farmers market in Columbia to hand-select produce, ensuring the tables stay filled with peak Carolina crops alongside regional pantry favorites.

She has also demonstrated a steadfast commitment to preserving the market’s home. When state highway widening plans along East Butler Road threatened to absorb key portions of the property, Chandler organized community support, met directly with transportation officials, and successfully secured project revisions to protect the parcel—preserving an agricultural landmark that local leaders openly recognize as an irreplaceable piece of Mauldin’s heritage.

The aisles: what the supermarket cannot stock

While corporate grocery chains buy by the tractor-trailer load for hundreds of regional storefronts, the Mauldin Open Air Market sources with the rhythm of the Carolina seasons:

• Picked at peak ripeness: Summer brings tables stacked high with vine-ripened tomatoes, South Carolina peaches, watermelons, field peas, squash, and peppers. Fall transitions into hearty root crops, sweet potatoes, and bushels of fresh collards and turnip greens.

• The heritage pantry: Shelves lined with small-batch jams, jellies, spiced apple butter, local raw honey, jarred chow-chow, hoop cheese, and stone-ground cornmeal.

• Dairy with an address: Cold cases stocked with fresh milk from Happy Cow Creamery in Pelzer, sourced straight from pastures just down the road.

• Southern roadside essentials: Fresh hot boiled peanuts and tubs of live bait—two staples that instantly root the market in its Upstate heritage.

The atmosphere: a wood stove and somebody who knows your name

Visit the market in January, and a wood stove is roaring against the morning chill. Stop by in July, and the doors are propped wide open to catch whatever breeze rolls off the foothills. Operating 364 days a year—closing only for Christmas Day—the market welcomes shoppers Monday through Saturday from 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM and Sundays starting at 11:00 AM.

Regardless of the season, the shelves are weathered wood, the displays are unpretentious, and the welcome is immediate. Local growers still drop off morning harvests directly at the loading door, meaning the person bagging your squash often knows the farmer who picked it at daybreak. To Chandler, every neighbor who walks through the door in search of fresh greens or a warm conversation is family.

A run to the supercenter is an errand; pulling into the Mauldin Open Air Market is a visit.