'Fruit Jesus' is here to give San Francisco a piece of its soul back

Konstantin Kosov rolls up to his first fruit delivery of the day, Heath Ceramics. Konstantin Kosov rolls up to his first fruit delivery of the day, Heath Ceramics. Photo: Blair Heagerty / SFGate Buy photo Photo: Blair Heagerty / SFGate Image 1 of / 40 Caption Close 'Fruit Jesus' is here to give San Francisco a piece of its soul back 1 / 40 Back to Gallery

I check my phone. 9:13 a.m. No texts. No missed calls.

Fruit Jesus is late.

And I'd be mad except for the fact that I know he's going to be worth the wait.

I'm at Wednesday's Civic Center farmer's market, standing smack dab in the middle of a melting pot of fresh fruit and vegetable seekers, enjoying alternating wafts of Belgian sugar waffles and crispy rotisserie chicken.

I get lost momentarily in the farmer's market's competing soundtracks, which include a steel drummer playing The Merrymen's "Feeling Hot, Hot, Hot," a lone trumpet blaring in the distance, and personal produce-filled shopping carts rumbling against the grooves of the herringbone brick that line UN Plaza — *tap*tap*tap*tap* — before I spot Konstantin Kosov.

The 34-year-old is impossible to miss.

The sun bounces off Kosov's golden brown thighs as he whips a brush through what is more mane than hair. His beard is grizzled-old-sea-captain-caliber and his Tevas ensure he lives up to at least half of his "Fruit Jesus" moniker.

His bike rig, now laying in the middle of UN Plaza, ensures he lives up to the other: a purple 24-speed Marin with a ripped-up leather seat and a massive bike trailer attached to the back wheel. The trailer holds 1,000 pounds of fruit and is the official (and only) vehicle of FruitRollup, a one-man farmer's market fruit delivery operation Kosov started in 2014.

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As the story goes, Kosov got a TaskRabbit request to procure Boudin bread every week for a San Francisco IT startup, and that simple ask since turned into Kosov's livelihood.

"The company was just like, yeah, the bread is fantastic and stuff, but, you know, summer is coming — it'd be nice to have some quality healthy options," he says. "And I'm like really into fruit. I eat a ton of fruit. I go to the market all the time and I get amazing fruit. I noticed you guys have s— fruits, just apples, oranges and bananas. I was like, 'I already bring you guys bread, I would be much happier to bring you fruit.'

"That was my first ever client."

He now has 50.

And through the years they've included the likes of Spotify, Zynga and Match.com. Kosov — the most only-in-S.F. of entrepreneurs — is doing well, and he's doing it all on his own, without any snazzy branding, or slick slogans. He's just a guy who looks a lot like Jesus, bringing you regular crates of fresh fruit in exchange for money.

Well, at least sometimes.

Kosov also barters fruit for everything from shorts and dental work, to plants and acupuncture.

"Part of my mission is to fruit up the world," he says.

Kosov makes deliveries by bike to clients in SoMa, the Financial District, and the Mission three days a week (Monday is his biggest with 40 in a single day), then spends Sunday hitting three to four San Francisco farmer's markets to stock up for his big Monday route.

A 29-year resident of San Francisco (he grew up in the Sunset after immigrating with this family from Ukraine at five years old), Kosov has been coming to the Civic Center farmer's market for 20 years.

Which is why he knows literally every farmer's name.

"Morning Grace," Kosov says, as Grace Teresi, proprietor of the eight-acre, triple-crop Miramonte Farm and Nursery beams. She's been a farmer since 1983, and is more than just a little familiar with Kosov.

"There's a range of things he looks for, unique things, things you can't get at the supermarket," she says.

Kosov pinballs from tent to tent looking for just these "things," filling bags and boxes with fruits two at a time after taking deep, intimate sniffs of every piece of produce, including from Glen Tanimoto's French improved plums.

"You won't see these in a grocery store, you'll see Italian plums, and they're not as sweet," says Tanimoto, who stands in front of a sign that reads "Glen Tanimoto Butte Co. / We only sell what we grow."

After an hour of rummaging through tents and then ducking behind them, and into U-Hauls and the backs of vans (presumably for the really, really good fruits?), Kosov has worked his way to an almost full cart, with almost two dozen crates filled with incredible smelling fresh fruits. He's now rearranging a box of Pakistani melons, placing the final piece of his fruit jigsaw puzzle before wheeling his bike and cart over to Market St.

I hop on my commuter bike and follow closely behind Kosov from Civic Center to the Mission, and along the way learn 1) he tries not to stop, at all, ever (because it's really hard to get a bike towing 1,000 pounds of fruit moving again), 2) he's the only person I've ever seen on a bike get high fives from people walking on the sidewalk, and 3) no one can resist shouting at Fruit Jesus, whether they're waiting at a light on a bike next to him, or whizzing by in an Uber, or simply crossing the street.

"I bring fruit to companies and people come in and everyone starts picking up the berries and picking up the fruit, and, like, all these coworkers are around the fruit table, you know, and just talking and just having that interaction I think is so powerful."

He talks about a "doughnut view" of the body, and how things we put into our body are the things we "touch most intimately" and all I can think about while he's saying all of this is: This guy really, really, really likes fruit.

And incredibly, has turned the love into a very analog way to survive in one of the most expensive, digital-first cities in the world. For all the pieces of the city's soul that have been lost as San Francisco's skyline continues to change, as its neighborhoods continue to gentrify, as big tech continues to sow roots, Kosov feels like a piece it has gained back.

He charges as little as $50 for a single delivery of fresh farmer's market fruit (that generally gets you six baskets of berries plus 15 pounds of larger fruit, though he caters each delivery special to each client), and that's enough to support him fully. He lives in an RV in the Mission (mostly because he didn't want to leave the city even as rents have skyrocketed), and has an attached vehicular work trailer. He spends Sunday nights in there sorting crates of fruit into perfect farm-fresh cornucopias for his clients.

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Kosov has burned through four carts and five bikes (he fruit-barters for good deals on new ones) in his five years in business. And while his budgets in the summer are bigger, companies pull back on the fruit spending in the winter, which is when Kosov goes back to the gig economy — he drives for bike delivery services to supplement.

His biggest competitor? FruitGuys, a company with 170 employees that racked up $1 million in sales in its first three years in business and has facilities across the country and nationwide delivery.

But what they don't have is a Fruit Jesus.

"You know, they're expensive and they kind of suck," he lets out. "I'm not trying to necessarily totally like profit maximize. I think part of it is also to try to kind of support the farmers, you know. So I don't necessarily want to squeeze them to the bottom price that I could possibly get out of the farmers, because I want to support them, too."

We finally — very slowly because of the tiniest of hills — roll into Heath Ceramics, where he sorts out three different boxes of fresh fruit, before hopping back on his bike, pedaling toward 19 more opportunities to convert new fruit disciples.

Grant Marek is the Editorial Director of SFGATE. Email: grant.marek@sfgate.com | Twitter: @grant_marek