To Market To Market
The last indoor market before the initial pandemic lockdown in March 2020, shoppers at the Aberdeen Pavilion weren’t looking for toilet paper, but they did seem to be stocking up on local food. They emptied vendors’ tables and some farmers even heard from shoppers who were keen to buy from their freezers or cellars as the market wound down. Steph Kittmer, the market manager for Ottawa Farmers’ Markets (OFM), observed that food hoarding had moved from grocery aisles to the local market on that particular Sunday.
The next day, the city of Ottawa locked the doors to all municipal buildings. Along with market managers across the province, Kittmer waited to see whether farmers’ markets would be labelled as essential by the Ontario government and allowed to open. What followed was weeks of labour she couldn’t have anticipated. Never before had she had to lobby the premier’s office on the market’s behalf.
“It wasn’t so much that the province saw markets as non- essential,” Kittmer explains, “but rather that farmers' markets always fall into this grey zone. We book [the space] through the city department called events allocations, but we’re really just tenants in a city building.” Markets needed to be recognized as food purveyors, and not a special event, to stay open.
One could be forgiven for thinking that markets could perhaps just run like a grocery store, but alas, bureaucracy isn’t always simple. Weeks of intense lobbying and logistics wrangling later, farmers’ markets were on the list of essential services and the mission within the board at the OFM was simply to get back up and running. They reopened initially as a “click and collect” model. Every participating vendor had an online platform, but OFM opted not to run as an aggregated website. With approximately 140 vendors, it was just too much to pull together.
It didn’t turn out to be a great fit, and Kittmer described it as the “saddest way to run a market.” It only lasted a couple weeks before they reopened with modified displays for distanced in- person shopping and, by July, OFM was running the market as it would for the rest of the summer. It ran in the same way that most outdoor markets would eventually run in the region — with limited capacity, one-way flow of foot traffic, hand sanitizer at the entries, mandatory masks, no product-sampling, no seating area, no eating in the market and vendors spaced further apart to maintain physical distancing.
Over the past year, market managers and volunteers have worked closely with their region’s public health teams to help prepare for reopenings and the various pivots. They’ve had near-daily conversations with public health officials to ensure everything ran safely. From Carp to Kingston, these folks have been managing the necessary pandemic pivots to ensure their vendors can get their products from farm to table.
The digital marketplace
Though OFM’s online market didn’t last long, other markets embraced the virtual format. Sarah Mackenzie, president and a vendor at the Perth Farmers’ Market, applied for a grant from the province to allow markets to get online with e-commerce software and a community organization awarded it some grant money, which allowed the market to run without charging its vendors any fees for the season. While Mackenzie was pleasantly surprised by the way vendors responded to the task of getting their shops set up online, it was still close to another full-time job for Mackenzie to get everything running and offer digital training to her fellow vendors. Online orders were picked up at Perth’s Crystal Palace, and customers could see the bustling sorting and packing of orders through the windows of the glass building.
“It was a learning curve for the customers and the vendors,” Mackenzie says, describing the effort by the small community as inspiring. “We all just felt like we were a team.”
Vendors didn’t just have to adapt to e-commerce logistics, market staff noticed a huge increase in the number of farms on social media and vendors showing up with contactless payment systems or keen to accept electronic money transfers at the market.
Melanie Anderson, a market manager for the ByWard and Parkdale Markets, says she’s been blown away by how farmers and vendors have adjusted.
“For farmers and producers, their role at the market is usually just coming to the market and selling,” Anderson says, adding that a farmer friend who had famously avoided getting a cell phone finally caved this year to connect with customers. “This year they had to learn how to promote themselves or set up a website.”
Anderson also noted some other trends, including an increase in farms offering CSAs and hosting their own farmgate shops. For some farmers, the best pivot turned out to be to eschew farmers’ markets for the season altogether, with folks looking to connect directly with local farmers and take advantage of a trip to a farm as an opportunity to get out of the house.
Amidst the uncertainty of changing regulations and what a pandemic summer would look like, Beechwood Market manager Chris Penton decided to pivot to a fully virtual format. Penton admitted it was a relatively controversial decision. He estimated that about 20 per cent of vendors and customers were upset by the change. Though an online platform lacks the personal connection that vendors and customers alike seek from a market setting, many vendors saw the appeal of putting their business online and knowing exactly how many orders to expect when packing for the weekend delivery instead of physically being at the market without guaranteed customers or sales.
With almost a full year of an online market under his belt, Penton says the Beechwood Market’s brand is stronger than ever. The small Beechwood team ran its online food hub throughout the winter season too, and now delivers across the city. Penton plans on running an online market and a smaller in-person market in the park this season. Several vendors declined returning onsite this season, opting to continue with online sales.
Emma Barken, operations manager at the Kingston Memorial Farmers’ Market, echoed the tradeoffs of a virtual marketplace. Barken helped the market transition to its online model just one week after its last regular weekend in March 2020 (and then promptly had to relocate to a church as a pickup location because the regular market spot became a COVID-19 testing centre).
Some vendors loved the stability of online ordering; there’s fewer wasted products and no need to worry about bad weather on a Sunday. The Memorial Farmers’ Market too found new customers online who hadn’t been to the market in person and had a relatively successful season online. They charged a small bagging fee, but kept delivery free for folks who were isolating at home, which saw many new customers become regulars for the convenience the market offered. The market will be open for in- person shopping in Kingston this summer, but Barken says the appetite for online shopping isn’t going anywhere. “It’s too much for 2021 to try and run two separate things,” Barken concedes, but she thinks that Kingston could support both models.
Community connection
The online market models and the modified in-person setups have ensured producers can safely connect with shoppers in a time when gathering has become a health risk. However, to be run as an essential service, the markets have had to pare down their offerings to only the essential components. For in- person markets, this has meant no live music and buskers, no picnicking within the market, encouraging shoppers to visit without lingering, no special events, and fewer vendors overall. Because of markets’ mandates to prioritize local agricultural and food products, this has meant that craft vendors have been hit particularly hard by not being able to retain vendor spots.
The Carp Market was not able to host any indoor vendors in its barn this year, where one can typically find local potters, wood- workers, knitters and more. Outdoors, a long line would form to get into the Carp Fairgrounds, “it looked like a lot of people, but of course it was just people leaving [six feet between themselves and the next person],” Carp Farmers’ Market president Randy Maguire says. The lack of a food court also hurt the market and regulars missed the annual garlic festival, among other special events that were also bumped by COVID-19. In spite of the chal- lenges, Maguire says the market was lucky to have had the market season it did and adds that it enjoyed plenty of exposure to new customers: “More people became aware of buying local and they felt more comfortable being able to do their shopping out in the open. I think that will help us in the long run.”
Despite feeling fortunate to have been able to keep the market running at all, it continues to be difficult to juggle nurturing the community connections of a market with the ongoing health crisis. Across the board, these managers emphasize that markets are not static; they are dynamic and adaptable. As more of the population gets vaccinated they are hoping to be able to invite more vendors to return to the market, and make use of their indoor spaces once more as well. While a “bare bones” model is far from ideal, Anderson says a silver lining is that quite a few vendors were more profitable last season because the market was recontextualized. Though there were no tourists and the market was no longer an option for social outings or lingering around the produce with a coffee or a baked good in hand, more and more people were coming out to do their weekly groceries. Stripped down to its essential components, the vendors were the main draw. “It brought us back to what we do at markets: highlight local products and producers,” Anderson says.
The future of markets
With more than a dozen farmers' markets in the Ottawa area alone, Anderson thinks the city has room for more. Saturdays will see a new producers-only farmers’ market in the ByWard Market this year. While other farmers’ markets are still having to limit how many vendors they can accommodate on site, Anderson is recruiting interested farmers for the market on York Street. Anderson says there is significant interest in this new market from younger or newly established farms that haven’t been able to squeeze into a spot at other markets in the city. Many of the farmers taking part in these ByWard Saturdays are only in their first couple of years of operating and are eager to build a clientele.
“We have an aging farming population, so this is what we need,” Anderson explains, eager to help these green vendors connect with Ottawans.
Penton, too, believes the city could benefit from more markets. Along with continuing to run the Beechwood Market as an online food hub and a mainstay in the neighbourhood park, he’s in the midst of creating a framework for municipal markets to offer a transferable template for other community or neighbourhood associations to adopt. A proponent of the 15-minute neighbourhood (where the concept is that one’s day-to-day needs should all be within a 15-minute walk of home), Penton sees great value — for local health, ecology, food accessibility and businesses — in having more small markets in Ottawa. Whether urban or rural, large or small, this past year has shown that farmers’ markets remain an important place to connect with neighbours and that, more than ever, these markets play a critical role in connecting shoppers to their local food producers.
Agriculture has always had to contend with variables controlled only by Mother Nature; droughts, floods and a changing climate can all create their own crises, and now an international health crisis has been added to the list of unpredictable concerns. While last year may have been all about adapting and “the crisis of the unknown,” Kittmer says she also saw heartwarming collaboration between markets and vendors, and that this year they are all well adapted and ready to roll with whatever the season brings. They may not be able to plan for a typical strawberry social at the market, but still Kittmer can’t wait for strawberries to appear.
“It doesn’t matter what’s happening in the world,” she chuckles, “we still need a strawberry season.”
Prepared food pivots
Market vendors who sell ready-made meals that many used to eat on site as part of the market-going experience managed to survive the no-eating rules at the market this year.
Pandemic restrictions have meant there cannot be any eating or drinking within farmers’ markets, which has been tough for prepared food vendors, and a blow to business at the markets more generally. Ottawa Farmers’ Markets manager Steph Kittmer says it’s not so much that market staff are concerned about shoppers sneaking a sip of lemonade or a bite of their falafel under their mask, but that since capacity inside the market area is limited they want to ensure everyone has the opportunity to come in and do their shopping.
The Market Eatery at Lansdowne Park is typically a busy corner of the market; in the small section, folks can find a diverse array of snacks and meals, from Korean bibimbap to Venezuelan arepas. To get their food to shoppers who can’t eat within the market, many vendors have switched to selling kits to assemble food at home, or frozen items to reheat. The Falafel Guys are among the vendors who adapted to an unusual market season, though luckily they didn’t have to change the delicious Syrian street food on offer, they just made sure to wrap both ends of their falafels in paper so folks weren’t tempted to start eating before they left the market.
As market-goers spy the Saj — the traditional Syrian oven Ahmad Altaouil and Ramez Chalhoub use to make their bread — in action, a line will typically form by The Falafel Guys’ stall. “It’s a little show while people wait for their food,” Chalhoub explains. Sadly, with smaller crowds in the market, they couldn’t rely on the show to pull in foot traffic.
Nevertheless, they were pleasantly surprised by the number of customers who came out each Sunday and Chalhoub thinks a byproduct of this past year is a renewed interest in all things local.
After a late start, Claudia Garcia and Edgard Aliaga were also grateful to have a market season that defied their expectations. The husband and wife team behind Che Malambo sells Argentine empanadas, pastries and herbaceous chimichurri sauce. The vendors were nervous about selling at the market after the pandemic hit. They used to sometimes come to the market with a toaster oven to heat empanadas up on the spot, but given this year’s restrictions stuck simply to takeaway for folks to reheat at home.
Garcia, who is keen for folks to become more familiar with her Argentine baked goods, says new customers became regulars over the course of season and would stop by to purchase enough empanadas to keep some in the freezer for later in the week. “It actually went super well for us,” she says.
The couple found they felt much more comfortable around shoppers at the market than the grocery store, and credit the sense of community fostered at the market. “The vendors, we are like a family,” Aliaga says. “We worry about each other and we take care of each other.”
