Walk into Habersham Marketplace on any given Friday and you'll find the same shape you found last month, and the month before that, going back to the summer of 2024. A farmers market runs from 4 to 7 p.m. Market Street closes to cars from the Marketplace entrance off Cherokee Farms Road down to Criollo and Bistro Ten. Vendors set up under the same live oaks. If you've lived here even a year, you know this rhythm without checking a calendar.
What you might not have clocked is how much has changed underneath that rhythm. The restaurants filling the storefronts along Market Street today are not, for the most part, the same restaurants that were there five or six years ago. Berto's Tex-Mex Grill, Piace Pizzeria, and Maggie's, the names longtime residents remember as the original dinner spots, have given way to Criollo, Heirloom's Pizzeria, Miramare Italiano, Albergotti Grill, and 1711 Tap House. The schedule held its shape. The businesses inside it did not.
That's the part worth understanding if you actually live here and want to know what a normal week looks like this fall, versus what you might be misremembering from a couple of years ago.
The Weekly Market Is the Baseline, Not the Full Picture
The Habersham Farmers Market launched in the summer of 2024 as a collaborative effort among the Marketplace's own business owners, with a stated goal of hosting 15 to 20 local growers and makers on any given Friday. That's still the working target. The market runs weekly, 4 to 7 p.m., and the logistics are specific enough that they only make sense to someone who's actually navigated them: Market Street closes to vehicles from 3 to 7:30 p.m., and residents are asked to move cars out of that stretch by 2:30 p.m. if they want to avoid a walk back to their vehicle after dinner.
This is the baseline. It's what happens most Fridays, and it's the version of the Marketplace that a resident who moved in last year and one who's been here since the early 2010s would both recognize.
Third Friday Is the Same Time Slot Running a Different Program
Once a month, the ordinary Friday market gets an upgrade that's easy to miss if you're not paying attention to which Friday you're on. On the third Friday of each month, the same 4 to 7 p.m. market window stretches into an evening event, with live music from 5 to 8 p.m. and Marketplace restaurants offering everything from casual plates to full sit-down dinners. The road closure window extends accordingly, running from 1:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. instead of the usual four-and-a-half hours.
The practical difference for a resident: if you're planning a low-key Friday grocery run through the market, you want a standard week. If you're looking for a reason to actually sit down at one of the restaurants and stay for music, the third Friday is the one to circle. Both versions run on the same infrastructure. Only one of them asks you to make dinner reservations.
The Restaurant Roster Has Almost Completely Turned Over
Here's where the interesting part sits. A Yelp review of Habersham Marketplace from over a decade ago recommended Berto's Tex-Mex Grill and Piace Pizzeria for lunch and dinner, with Maggie's rounding out the trio as one of the better dinner spots in Beaufort. None of those three names show up in current listings.
What's there now, based on the most recently updated restaurant directories for the address at 13 Market:
- Bistro Ten, a garden-to-plate restaurant at 10B Market that runs Sunday suppers, cooking classes, and wine tastings
- Criollo, another anchor tenant on the same stretch of Market Street
- Heirloom's Pizzeria, which has drawn enough of a following that new Beaufort residents specifically mention seeking it out
- Miramare Italiano
- Albergotti Grill
- 1711 Tap House
Separately, chef Charlie Raynes opened The Tavern at Habersham at 17 Market as a modern bar and grill with eight beers on tap, after years of working his way up through casual and fine dining kitchens before enrolling at Le Cordon Bleu.
None of this means the Marketplace is unstable. If anything, the opposite is true: a retail and dining district that can fully replace its restaurant lineup while keeping its weekly market format, its road closure times, and its Third Friday music slot completely intact is a district with a strong operating structure. The storefronts turn over. The Merchants Council that runs the calendar does not.
The service and retail side of the Marketplace has held its cast more consistently. EarthFIT gym, Sunset Slush, Synergy Cycling Studio, Mystic Osprey Gallery, Pearls Before Noon, Lily & Lou's Eatery & Market, Living Color Salon, and Madeline Cathleen Designs are all still part of the current merchant list, alongside longer-standing names like The Boxwood Cottage and The Bible Student, reportedly the only all-Bible bookstore in the Lowcountry. If you want a sense of what's actually stayed put versus what's cycled through, the gym and the gallery are a better bet than the dinner reservation.
October Turns the Whole Marketplace Into One Event
Once a year, the weekly rhythm gets suspended entirely. The Habersham Harvest Festival takes over Market Street for a full weekend, and this October marks its 16th run, scheduled for Friday through Sunday, October 9 through 11, 2026. Friday night typically runs as a carnival evening with music until 9 p.m., while artisan vendors, food trucks, and a petting zoo take over Saturday and Sunday. Parking shifts to the fields along Cherokee Farms Road, and handicap parking is directed to the area in front of the EarthFIT gym at 101 North Market.
In past years, the regular Friday farmers market has paused entirely on the festival weekend to make room for the bigger event, so residents who show up expecting the usual 4 p.m. market on Harvest Festival Friday should plan around the festival schedule instead. It's a small but real distinction: one Friday in October isn't a normal Friday or even a Third Friday. It's its own thing.
What This Actually Means for a Fall Friday
If you're trying to plan an evening in Habersham this fall, the calendar sorts into three clearly different experiences wearing the same time slot: a standard Friday market for a quick, low-key evening; a Third Friday with music and dinner reservations worth making in advance; and the Harvest Festival weekend in October, which replaces the market altogether and asks for a different kind of planning around parking and crowds.
The restaurants you'll walk past while doing any of the three have shifted more than the schedule itself. If you haven't been to the Marketplace in a while, Bistro Ten and Criollo are worth checking out before assuming the old lineup is still there. When the farmers market season winds down in December, the same Marketplace picks up a different set of fixtures, including the neighborhood's Holiday Party among the storefronts and the annual tree lighting in Eastover Park, both of which draw on the same collaborative structure that keeps the Friday market running the rest of the year.
The takeaway for anyone who already calls Habersham home: the schedule is the reliable part. The restaurants are the part worth checking before you commit to a reservation.
If you're weighing a move within the Lowcountry or just curious what a home in a walkable, New Urbanist community like Habersham is worth right now, The Agency Hilton Head can walk you through it. Request a Complimentary Market Valuation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
