Winter success boosts market
Toolbox
By Brent Curtis Herald Staff - Published: May 5, 2008
Why did the downtown Rutland business cross the road?
To bring customers from the Farmers' Market in Depot Park over to their side of the street.
Businesses in the downtown are trying to tap into the high-volume farmers' market which opens this week and they're not alone.
Thanks to the impressive first year of the Winter Farmers' Market, organizers for the summer event said demand for booths at the outdoor market has nearly doubled this year.
"We had about 40 vendors last year and I'll bet you this year we'll have 70 or 75 vendors out there," said Greg Cox, a West Rutland Farmer and president of the Farmers' Market. "It's amazing that if you put a little effort into something it can come back in spades."
The Tuesday Farmers' Markets, which only attracted about half a dozen vendors last year, is expected to bring in as many as 15 to 20 vendors each week this year, Cox said.
The success of the winter market, which Cox said earned close to $250,000 in sales, was so great that the event is branching out. When the first summer market opens on Saturday, booths will be set up in the closed entryway leading into the Rutland Shopping Plaza parking lot, around Depot Park's perimeter and near the dog-on-a-leash statue in the park where vendors haven't been allowed to set up in the past.
At the same time that the event seems to be growing organically, local merchants are hoping they've finally found a way to introduce a hybrid-strain of business that will cross-pollinate the downtown.
"One of the frustrating things we've never been able to do is to get people to cross the street," Michael Coppinger, Downtown Rutland Partnership executive director, said. "We're hoping this works."
The idea is simple.
This summer, the partnership is purchasing a booth at the market. Each week, a different downtown vendor will fill the booth with products that customers who only visit the downtown to frequent the Farmers' Market would never see.
Also at the booth, shoppers will be able to find coupons for discounts at other downtown shops as well as menus full of lunch specials that can be enjoyed just a crosswalk away.
It's an exciting opportunity for merchants like Stephen Eddy who can look out his shop every sunny summer Saturday and see where the action is.
"The downtown market is so important to the area," said Eddy, whose bookstore Book King will be the first tenant at the new market booth. "You can look out there and see hundreds of people every week. It's incredible."
Even more impressive to Eddy than the volume of people at the market is the atmosphere they shop in. Rather than a sterile environment, the farmers' market functions as much as a social event as a consumer market.
"The whole thing is about creating a community," he said. "Downtown isn't about sales. It's got to be about community and shopping locally."
Eddy and the participating downtown businesses will be joined by out-of-town newcomers such as Whipple Hollow, a hydroponic tomato operation that Terry LaMay works for in West Rutland.
LaMay, who drives trucks for Whipple Hollow and was working at the company's booth in the Winter Farmers' Market on Saturday, said the success his company enjoyed selling tomatoes in the back of the Strand Theater on Wales Street this winter was so great that the company was preparing to close its West Rutland store to sell all its produce at the Rutland markets.
"We've been making more money in one day at the market than in a whole week at the store," he said.
The winter market has also been a boon for the Rutland Food Co-op which is attached to the front of the Strand Theater and serves as an entryway for the hundreds of market shoppers each week.
"It's been incredible," said Sharon Nimtz, a member of the Co-op's board of directors. "We've had double or triple the number of customers on Saturdays and a lot of them have returned during the week."
The Tuesday Farmers' Market will have different hours this year. Instead of running from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., the market will run from 2 or 3 p.m. until 6 p.m.
Contact Brent Curtis at brent.curtis@rutlandherald.com.
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