The Sara Hardy Downtown Farmers Market was started in the early 80’s by a group of farmers, and has grown into a 120+ vendor market that serves seven surrounding counties. They were introduced to LFM by our friends at Taste the Local Difference (TLD), and the rest was history. We spoke to Nick Viox at the market to learn more.When we spoke with Nick in May, their physical market had not yet opened – it has since opened and they are now offering online market sales for their midweek market and in person sales on Saturday.

LFM: Hi, Nick! Thank you so much for speaking with us. Tell us a little bit about your farmers’ market!

N: The Sara Hardy Farmers Market was started by a group of vendors in the heart of downtown Traverse City in the 1980’s. In 1984, the DDA (Downtown Development Authority), took it over. It’s a huge benefit to having the market in our city; it’s a huge traffic driver to downtown, and it pairs well with our downtown businesses. So we took it over, and we’ve been running it since.

Now we have over 120 local area farmers, serving a seven-county radius in northern Michigan. We are producer and farmer only – which means, we do not allow anyone to resell product at our market – and it’s something that we take pride in. We happen to be in this pocket of northern Michigan that produces over 75% of our crops, and we’re really fortunate to have the local growers that we do.

We sell cheese made with local milk, chutney made from rhubarb grown at that same farm; everything is as local as it can be. We believe a farmers market is a place to create relationships [between local farmers and the community], and those relationships are based in honesty and transparency.

LFM: I’d imagine that a lot got turned around when the shutdown orders came in Michigan. What was that like? 

N: We definitely needed to reconfigure. Essentially, our entire market has gone online with LFM! A lot of our operations have shifted to our online market, all while keeping our Saturday morning outdoor market.

When we got the shutdown orders, markets were considered essential businesses, so they were able to stay open. When all of this happened, we were working with Tricia at Taste the Local Difference. We wanted to figure out a way that we could operate safely. Luckily, TLD had already done the research on online marketplaces, and they introduced us to LFM!

Having an online market is something we always wanted to do, and now that we have the platform it’s something we plan on doing in perpetuity. We were looking at our physical market, and we were wondering how we could do both together. LFM has allowed us to operate online and host an in-person farmers market seamlessly!

LFM: How have your vendors handled the new platform? 

N: It required some hand-holding, and I want to credit LFM and TLD with helping bring our vendors online. We have 65 of them online now, which is excellent. Ultimately, we’ve gotten a lot of people more familiar with the digital way of doing this. Many of them are very grateful. We heard that a lot of our vendors are actually doing better on the online platform than they would have in a physical market in the month of May! 

LFM: What has the response from your customer base been like?

N: We’ve definitely seen a broadened customer base; more people are getting exposed to products that they otherwise wouldn’t know were there. Sometimes a farmers market can be an overwhelming place. LFM allows us to reach that audience that we otherwise wouldn’t reach.

Some folks are eager for the physical market; they miss seeing everyone’s faces. But there’s a tremendous amount of support from the people that have turned to our online market. They’re spending more than they used to. They feel like they know exactly what they’re getting, they know that it’s seamless, easy to purchase.

There’s a lot of love for the LFM interface itself; people are saying it looks so good! It’s so clean! It’s so easy! Which I love hearing, of course.

And finally, they’re enjoying the fact that they can get local food without having to be in a crowd.  They feel safe and protected and they appreciate being able to support local farmers as much as they can. We are able to provide local food to those who cannot access the Saturday market, otherwise.

LFM: So now that you’ve moved online, how does your market work?

N: Right now we are a pick-up market – we thought about delivery but we just weren’t ready to take that on. We also operate our Saturday morning outdoor market.

When we launched the online market, we really didn’t know how many customers we would get; it was like diving into the unknown. But, within our first week, we had nearly 400 people sign up! So, we really had to modify how we managed our pickup system to accommodate all those new people.

Our vendors show up with all of the products on their pick lists. We have a designated volunteer for each type of product. For example; all your breads products will get checked in with one person. All of the vendors that require a cooler are checking in with one person. Like that. Once it’s checked in, all that product goes into our stock area.

We are partnering with a Goodwill Food Rescue Truck (it’s a cooler truck) and it’s been excellent. We are able to store all of our refrigerated product in their truck, and at the end of the market (if no one has come to claim their products or somebody brought extra product) then we donate all of that to Goodwill Food Rescue.

LFM: If you were going to recommend LFM to another market, what would you say?

N: Working with LFM has been a dream, it’s been exceptional. We’ve really loved the tech support, the trainings, the feedback that you guys give us. It’s been incredibly helpful. It’s been above and beyond what we expected.