our story

A neighborhood market with a global perspective

Iconic culinary destination Chelsea Market has become an internationally-renowned brand and is considered one of the greatest indoor food and retail marketplaces in the world today. Located in the heart of New York City’s Meatpacking District, the market’s collection of distinctive and diverse merchants adds up to more than just your average food hall, rather a lively marketplace where one can shop the region’s finest fishmonger, take home prime cuts of meat from one of the area’s best whole-animal butchers, load up on artisanal cheeses, fresh produce, and imported Italian dry goods. It’s the savory meals enjoyed at Chelsea Market, just as much as the fresh ingredients purchased there that make it a beloved destination for locals and travelers alike.

exterior shot of Chelsea Market steel canopy

History

The area has always been the focus of food in the city, beginning with the Algonquin Indians, who traded their game and crops on the banks of the Hudson River at this same spot. The trains of the High Line once served the wholesale butchers who lined the streets beneath the tracks and cooled their provisions with blocks of Hudson River ice, and the National Biscuit Company established its factory—now reclaimed as the Chelsea Market—here to take advantage of the butchers’ lard in the nineteenth century. This long history—and the stripped-down brick architecture of the building—gives the Market a unique character.

Attracting 6 million national and international visitors annually, it is one of the most trafficked, and written-about, destinations of any kind in New York City. For both local foodies and international tourists, it’s entirely possible to enter the Market in the morning and not exit until lunchtime, without ever growing bored—and certainly without ever going hungry.