Downtown's Vale Avenue Farmers Market opened for the season this weekend with a longer vendor waitlist than organizers have ever had to turn away, a sign of how much competition has grown for the roughly forty stalls that fit along the market's usual footprint.
Ruth Alvarado, who has managed the market since taking it over from its founding organizer, said this year’s applicant pool was the largest she has seen, with 63 vendors applying for roughly a dozen open stalls after several longtime vendors retired or relocated over the winter. She said the market ultimately added eight new vendors while keeping 34 returning stalls, bringing the season’s total closer to the market’s practical capacity along its three-block stretch of Vale Avenue. “We could probably fill twice as many stalls as we have room for,” Alvarado said. “The hard part of this job used to be recruiting vendors. Now it’s telling good vendors no.”
New faces at the market
Among the new vendors is Priya Chandrasekaran, who left a lab-technician job at a Foundry Row biotech firm last year to launch a fermented-foods stall selling small-batch kimchi and pickled vegetables. She said she spent months on the market’s waitlist before a spot opened up. “I make this stuff in a commercial kitchen I share with two other vendors at 5 a.m. before my shift,” Chandrasekaran said. “Getting an actual stall here means I might not need the shift much longer.”
Also new this season is Hollis Fanning, whose mushroom farm sits on a converted dairy property outside the city limits in Wentworth County. Fanning said he had applied to sell at the market for three consecutive seasons before being accepted. “I kept getting the same email saying to reapply next year,” he said. “I understand why. There’s only so much sidewalk.” He said he expects the market stall to roughly double the retail portion of his business, which currently sells mostly to restaurant kitchens.
I’ve had the same corner for fifteen years. I don’t begrudge the new vendors a spot, but I notice the market looks different than it did when I started. There’s more prepared food, less actual produce, and a lot more people my kids’ age running the stalls.
Walt Ostrander, sweet corn and tomato vendor
Walt Ostrander, a returning vendor who has sold sweet corn and tomatoes at the market for fifteen seasons, said he has watched the vendor mix shift gradually as prepared-food stalls like Chandrasekaran’s have multiplied. He said the change reflects the same forces reshaping much of Downtown Core and Foundry Row, where a wave of newer residents with disposable income has changed what sells. “I’m not complaining about my own sales,” Ostrander said. “I’m just saying this market used to be mostly about getting produce to people who needed it cheap. Now it’s also entertainment for people who could just as easily eat at a restaurant.”
A boost for downtown foot traffic
Theresa Nakamura, executive director of the Bellwater Chamber of Commerce, said the market’s growth has become one of the more reliable draws for Vale Avenue’s storefronts, particularly on Saturday mornings when nearby shops report their strongest weekly sales. “A vendor selling mushrooms or kimchi off a folding table isn’t competing with the businesses on this street,” Nakamura said. “They’re bringing customers who then walk into the businesses on this street. That’s part of why the city has been willing to keep closing these blocks off for it.”
City Council Member Patricia Yoon, whose District 1 seat covers the Downtown Core corridor where the market sets up, said the market’s expansion this season came up during recent council discussion of the vacancy-tax ordinance targeting empty Vale Avenue storefronts. “You can’t tax your way to a vibrant downtown,” Yoon said. “You also need things like this market pulling people onto the street in the first place. The two efforts are supposed to work together.”
Alvarado said the market has also benefited from the city’s small-business grant program for Vale Avenue storefronts, which several vendors used last year to cover the cost of commercial-kitchen licensing and food-safety certification required to sell prepared foods. She said at least three of this year’s new vendors, including Chandrasekaran, drew on the program before applying to the market.
- The market runs Saturdays through the fall, weather permitting, along a three-block stretch of Vale Avenue.
- This season’s 42 vendor stalls include 34 returning vendors and eight new additions.
- Organizers received 63 vendor applications for the open stalls, the largest applicant pool in the market’s recent history.
Fanning said he sold out of his first weekend’s mushroom inventory within two hours of the market’s opening, a result he called “encouraging and slightly terrifying” given how much more he will need to grow to keep up. Chandrasekaran said she sold through roughly 80 jars of kimchi and pickled vegetables by early afternoon. “I priced everything assuming I’d be standing here at 3 p.m. wondering if I’d made a mistake,” she said. “Instead I was calling my mom asking if she could help me jar more product by Wednesday.”
Ostrander, for his part, said he sold out of his early tomato crop faster than any opening weekend in recent memory, crediting the larger overall crowd the expanded vendor lineup appeared to draw. “More stalls means more people walking the whole three blocks instead of just the one they came for,” he said. “I’ll take the extra foot traffic, even if half of them are here for somebody else’s kimchi.”