public markets

Vendor’s 360 degree view

Recently, I noticed that this vendor at the New Orleans Road Food Festival had thought through their entire setup-both from the front and from the back. It’s a great idea when vendors walk the space they use to see how people will view their setup from a less obvious vantage point.

Not only does this vendor have a 2-sided sign up, the entire group has t-shirts on that identify their site. AND, the whole thing looks pretty organized.
If a shopper happens to see mess, or can’t tell what what is being sold from whatever side they are on, they may just keep on walking…
and by the way, they had great gumbo. And had another great idea- they offered a 2-dollar “tasting size”!

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Longtime vendors are heart of French Market: Letter | NOLA.com

In my old city is an old shed market that is constantly undergoing its own trials and tribulations. It is the very heart of our city, being the spot that Native Americans traded their wares and the French built the city around. However, in my lifetime it has become a set of buildings without a plan.
The link leads to a letter to the editor of our local paper and it and the ensuing comments are important to note as they come from some of the vendors. I am not sure the entire story is being told in this letter- well, let’s say it is not, nor did the letter writer expect to cover 250 years of history in it.

I will add that as a farmers market organizer I ran a weekday open-air market in this place as a favor to this corporation and its history as our market heritage, and one of the only things I was glad of post-September 2005, was that my organization could rethink that decision before reopening. We did not reopen that market- it was the only one that we ultimately did not and had more to do with resources and new management unknown to us, then the potential of the place. But, it was a difficult place to run an entrepreneurial market, and this is from someone who ran 3 others weekly and another holiday market every December.

There are many ideas that could work here, but none of them (in my mind) start with reducing the vendors without a strong plan to reinvent the base. I still am not sure the management know who their target audience is and how to reach them. I am not sure they even know how to find their target vendors or how to work with existing vendors to maximize their hard work and the market’s investment.
In short, even though I study markets daily, I am not sure of anything when it comes to the French Market.

Longtime vendors are heart of French Market: Letter | NOLA.com.

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Community markets innovating in Central Brooklyn

Am in Central Brooklyn, working with 6 great community organizations who run markets. All 6 are creating innovative projects through their market, such as senior mixed baskets, rooftop gardens, night markets, food pantries and more. They use their market as their welcome wagon and as their laboratory for all of their ideas.
Inspiring to see what low-capital, high-energy activists can do with just a little bit of encouragement and entrepreneurial drive.

If you get to NYC, take the trip to Bed Stuy to see what is going on and share some ideas of your own with these wonderful organizations:

East New York Farms
Brooklyn Rescue Mission
Hattie Catharn Community Garden
Cypress Hills Youthmarket
Brownsville Farmers Market
Bushwick Farmers Market

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Queens isn’t done yet

I look forward to hearing a response from Greenmarket about the post at the bottom, especially as I know the Greeenmarket Director lives in Queens, and is truly committed to expanding the good food revolution to every part of the city.

My response would be that,yes California is unique in so many ways, including the amount of year-round produce available. Also, there are food deserts everywhere, including California and farmers markets often stand alone in combating those with healthy food. We need others in the fight, those shops and resellers who pay a fair price for farmers goods, and understand how produce should be displayed and sold properly. This takes time and patience and I hope that every time there is a farmer selling produce that is useful for her daughter, she takes the time to be an early adapter, so that one day, Queens will be a farm paradise.
Link to story

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CFSC Policy newsletter

The best policy newsletter on food policy-and I’m not just saying that because I’m on their board!
It’s really worth a subscription.
CFSC

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Sioux City Farmers Market report

An excellent example of a market annual report. Clearly, this market engages lots of partners to help on a regular basis.
I truly believe that the most successful markets have the widest group of community partners assisting them.
Check out how much data they have for the year; each piece of that data will help another partner or a vendor or a market understand it’s function and potential a little better.
Sioux City

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Kitchen Gardener pods

Markets can do well to encourage kitchen gardeners to socialize and find ways to encourage share information – maybe even to curate those discussions at the market.

kitchen gardeners

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L3C designation

As many of you may know from the listserve postings and from this blog, I am beginning to do research on types of governance of markets and market organizations. Interestingly, I find that many organizers that I am chatting with simply believe that they cannot get 501c3 status (mostly through informal local advice they get or even during the first foray to I.R.S.) or think the 501c3 process will be too long or arduous. In response, they incorporate as other types of 501s that do not allow donations or make it easy to receive grants. Just as often, many seem to not do any incorporation which, until a terrible thing happens and those running the thing are held financially responsible and lose their personal property as a result, may feel like enough. This is particularly of concern to me when markets are run by a farmer and therefore operating without a corporation or LLC designation may mean endangering the farm itself.
One of the options may ultimately be the L3C designation. As I was beginning this post, I received a call from a friend who works with a foundation (that does not fund food work, sorry!). Upon hearing what I was writing about she shared that she is also researching the L3C as a way to help innovative social enterprises that will not be covered under their grant-making rules.

While still largely untested, the low-profit limited liability incorporation may become useful for food enterprises, such as farmers markets. It means that profit is possible but profit is secondary to the general purpose and good of the organization. It allows for program-related investments (PRI) from foundations in states that have authorized it. So far, legislation has been passed in Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming with many other states having introduced legislation.

So take a look and I’ll have more on this later…
L3C

Much more L3C info

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Vendor neighbors

Yeah, there are some differences between art vendors and farmers market vendors, but still, there is something here for all market managers to understand.

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Bakers denizen

A great quick story about some entrepreneurial bakers that vend at the 14th and U Washington DC market run by Robin Shuster. Using shared space, they are building their business slowly but pretty darn well it seems by the article. That Robin was the spark for their business does not surprise me; having met her, I can verify she is a classic market organizer- part connector and visionary and full-time urger!

Robin runs both the 14th and U Saturday market and the Bloomingdale Sunday market as well in DC. Her excellent website is found here

Post story
(This Post story may require an account to access by the way.)

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Case studies on governance

I am beginning some independent research on market types and would love to hear from a few markets that:

1. Have existed for more than 5 years and are their own independent farmers market organization started by community members.
2.Have existed for more than 5 years and are their own independent farmers market organization started by farmers.
3. Have existed more than 5 years and run their farmers market under another organization’s fiscal agency and were started by farmers.
4. Have existed more than 5 years and run their farmers market under another organization’s fiscal agency and were started by community members.
5. Have existed more than 5 years and run their farmers market as a for profit business and have an advisory board of farmers and/or shoppers.
This research is to assist state, regional and national market organizations with designing their resources and will lead to more research on typology of markets. Typology of markets can help individual markets with comparing and contrasting data and can also assist investors in understanding the capacity and potential of markets in the future. This is work that I began while with marketumbrella.org in New Orleans and have continued while doing some other research for the Farmers Market Coalition and will be shared with both organizations.
I will offer the finished case study to you as a report you can use for your organization and also link your site to the website I create for this data.
Please email me at Dar Wolnik at gmail to schedule 20-30 minutes for the research questions.

I am also attaching a link a quick (less than 10 minute) survey if that is better. I’ll follow up with markets that complete the survey.
Survey

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Random pictures only a market manager might love…

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Wholesome Wave data circa 2010

An excellent reference for all farmers markets. This link will take you to Wholesome Wave’s program page, where a pdf of their survey is available. This will tell you the impact of their double value coupon projects and also give some very helpful demographics.
Wholesome Wave

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