Dwayne Call remembers helping out at his great-aunt Blanche’s nut shop as a kid, putting labels on jars of her homemade peanut butter. Today, he’s the boss of Magee’s House of Nuts and Magee’s Kitchen at the Original Farmers Market in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles, which he took over after his aunt, Phyllis Magee, retired last year.

Call, 31, is one of several next-generation business owners who lease space at the market, which is celebrating its 80th birthday this year and has shown remarkable consistency in a city that’s changed and grown around it.

Other multigenerational businesses at the market include Littlejohn’s English Toffee; Kip’s Toyland; and the A.F. Gilmore Co., which owns the market.

It’s not just the owners who have stuck around, however. Magee’s still has several employees who worked there when Call was a little boy having his run of the store. That continuity has maintained the market’s classic feel.

“Once you walk in the market, it’s almost timeless,” Call said. “A lot of our returning customers say that once you’re in the market, it feels like nothing has changed.”

Plenty of Magee’s customers are next-generation peanut-butter purchasers who still come to get the sticky spread straight from the massive old-time industrial grinder that’s the centerpiece of the shop.

“While there are multigenerational businesses inside the farmers market, we also have multigenerational customers,” Call said. “We have families that come and say, ‘My grandma brought me here.’”

Magee’s opened in 1917 at downtown L.A.’s grand central market before becoming an original tenant of the farmers market in 1934. The opening of the Grove shopping center next to the market 12 years ago changed the landscape of the area. However, Grove shoppers who came for the brand names and celebrity sightings at the new mall often discover the old-time charms of the farmers market.

“We’re still getting customers who come to the Grove and never knew the market existed,” Call said.

He said his store plans to be in business for the next 80 years. His 6-year-old daughter comes with him to work every Friday during the summer, labeling jars just like he used to. And he insists the old-fashioned peanut butter is as good as ever.

“This is the real deal here,” Call said. “It’s the way peanut butter’s supposed to taste.”

– Matt Pressberg