Hot Button: Market Share

Are enough people supporting farmers’ markets to justify one in every Seattle neighborhood?

Market Share
Belltown and Georgetown won the imaginary farmers’ market lottery this year, embracing the glorious promise of sweet berries, fresh peas and a community gathering place for the summer. Last year, the Pike Place Market created new farmers’ markets in the Cascade neighborhood and at City Hall Plaza. Independent markets also sprang up in Meadowbrook and South Park, while volunteers on Queen Anne created a new market after the organization that used to run the market there said it couldn’t be done. 

Recently, the city of Seattle has even added monetary muscle to its market cheerleading, slashing what used to be thousands of dollars in annual fees to as little as $251 and making it newly feasible for small startups to join the party. Seattle will boast 18 neighborhood markets this summer—following a steep upward curve since 1993, when the University District Farmers Market made its debut.

The continued growth of these markets is an idea as evocative as Herbert Hoover’s chicken in every pot. But will a farmers’ market in every neighborhood really benefit Seattle consumers and the region’s farmers? Are there really enough chickens—and farmers—to go around?

“It doesn’t work to have one on every corner,” says Chris Curtis, founder of the University District Farmers Market and a national leader in the farm-to-table movement. Curtis is director of the Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance, which will operate seven Seattle markets in 2010: University District, West Seattle, Broadway (Capitol Hill), Columbia City, Phinney, Lake City and Magnolia.

In recent months, emissaries from nine other neighborhoods, including Beacon Hill and Genesee, have approached the alliance, asking it to spread more branches, but the organization is in “a holding pattern,” Curtis says. It declined to sponsor markets that wound up opening under the sponsorship of other organizations, fearing there weren’t enough farmers or customers in those areas to justify opening a market.

 “At some point,” Curtis says, “there are too many.”

Last year, sales dropped 2 percent overall at markets sponsored by the alliance. It’s not a bad showing in a disastrous economy, but still worrisome after 16 years of unbridled growth. A recent survey of farmers done by NFMA for King County showed that opening new markets has dropped to the bottom of their priority list. Just a few years ago, says Curtis, providing new market venues was one of their top concerns. 

Although many farmers have expanded their businesses in response to the growing number of markets, the county report declared: “There is a limit to the ability of existing King County farmers to support new markets.”

The Phinney neighborhood, for instance, had lobbied for a market for years before one opened in 2007 under the alliance umbrella. For customers, Phinney is a typical delight to visit, with kids frolicking on slides, and patrons checking out Billy Allstot’s famous tomatoes, the cider from Rockridge Orchards and the fabulous frying Bintje potatoes from Olsen Farms. For farmers, though, it’s been stagnant. The market’s challenges, said a report by the nonprofit Cascade Harvest Coalition, include “more neighborhood markets every year negatively impacting year-over-year sales.”

Nationally, people have similar questions about a downside to the spread of farmers’ markets. A report last year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) questioned whether markets were growing too rapidly and dividing the customer pie into ever smaller slices. In the Bay Area, which has fewer markets per capita than Seattle—there are 20 in San Francisco—“residents now have so many to choose from that some markets don’t draw the critical mass of buyers that farmers need to turn a profit,” reported The Wall Street Journal. New York City’s Greenmarket sites were criticized by shoppers during a period of fast expansion in 2006 for being stretched too thin.

Curtis, who attended a farmers’ market conference in California earlier this year, says two terms she heard repeatedly were “cannibalization” and “carnivalization.”

Still, whether Seattle has too many markets depends on the people talking and on their goals. “There is certainly a question of saturation,” says James Haydu, director of communications for the Pike Place Market, which is expanding into new areas “cautiously and thoughtfully.” Haydu says its initial forays beyond Pike Place went well. Cascade’s 2009 market was reasonably successful, averaging about 500 customers weekly, while the one at City Hall Plaza, also begun last year, was “a rock star,” with triple those numbers. Haydu has been approached by other neighborhoods and businesses about expanding further, but, for now, he says, the answer is no.

One organization that has gladly committed to adding more markets this year is the Seattle Farmers Market Association (SFMA), which operates the busy, year-round Ballard Farmers Market and will have five others in 2010: Fremont, Wallingford, Madrona and the new markets in Belltown and Georgetown.

“To suggest we’ve somehow reached a saturation point is, to me, just absurd,” says the group’s communications director, Zachary Lyons, a former director of the Washington State Farmers Market Association. Judy Kirkhuff, market master for the SFMA, says the group’s sales were up 6 percent last year—a big change from past years, when that number went as high as 40 percent, but not yet alarming.
On request, Kirkhuff scheduled a trial half-season market for the new Belltown market at Olympic Sculpture Park, choosing Thursdays, when the Pike Place Market (less than a mile away) doesn’t feature organic farmers’ produce outdoors. Georgetown, a “food desert” that has long sought its own farmers’ market, will also finally get one on Airport Way—combined with an antiques-and-crafts market meant to draw customers from neighboring communities, such as Beacon Hill and South Park.

Allowing antiques sellers and other non-food vendors is part of the philosophical divide on the saturation argument. The success of some markets, Lyons thinks, may lie in the “destination” model of Ballard, which counted more than 9,200 adults coming through on a Sunday in February. That figure would have been unimaginable a decade ago—in part because there wasn’t enough support at the time to keep a Seattle market open past summer’s end. Ballard has now become a place to spend the day, Lyons says, a place to window-shop, to walk the dog, to stop for brunch.

That’s not completely in line with the original goal of farmers’ markets—giving farmers a place to sell what they grow—which Curtis still lists as her overriding priority. But in Seattle, with its sprawling geography and focus on distinct neighborhood boundaries, communities now hunger for them as gathering places, as sources of pride that are not just civic, but micro-civic. “It really is trying to replace that Main Street, that town square, if you will,” says Andrew Stout, CEO of Full Circle Farm, which grows organic produce on 400 acres in the Snoqualmie and Sammamish valleys.

That’s what it did for Queen Anne, where community members rallied to save their market after the SFMA pulled out last year. Queen Anne lost its old spot at McClure Middle School and the SFMA said a proposed new location on West Crockett Street was unworkable. But the founding group of neighbors took over and the revived, independently run market quickly became a central meeting spot, a place where friendships are formed, where neighbors meet—and money is spent.

“In an economy that was the worst since the Great Depression, we had a 10 percent increase in gross sales at our market, which surprised us all,” says Queen Anne director Julie Whitehorn. There was no shortage of vendors for the farm-focused market, and fans flocked regularly to pie-baking contests, chef demonstrations, even book signings, making plans on Twitter to meet up and shop together for their peaches and pluots.

Was the SFMA wrong to think the Queen Anne market couldn’t succeed in a new location? Not necessarily. It wouldn’t have had the same success, Whitehorn says, as a larger destination market also emphasizing arts and crafts. And, while sales were up, Queen Anne still isn’t flush. Vendor fees alone can’t cover the organizer’s costs; it relies on support from grants, sponsorships, donations and countless volunteer hours. And it’s not alone in that approach. “All the King County markets depend in some way on subsidies, such as free rent, volunteers and reduced permit fees,” said the recent report by the King County Department of Natural Resources.

Full Circle Farm’s Stout believes the secret is to have a balance in supply and demand among customers, vendors and markets. That’s harder to do than it sounds. On a recent Saturday at the University District market, Skagit River Ranch owner George Vojkovich said he will not staff any markets beyond the four that he and his wife, Eiko, can handle on their own. “We’re a family farm,” says Vojkovich, who sees his decision as good news for other producers.

But are there enough such producers to fill that gap? Fifteen farmers are on a waiting list to join the University District Farmers Market—but 50 percent of them are selling eastern Washington stone fruit. Curtis says there isn’t enough variety on the list to support a whole new startup.

“We’re at a point right now where more markets want to come up, but there are not enough growers always to fill the needs—or if there are, the grower has to decide to go to 20 markets,” says Stout.
Full Circle Farm does staff tables at some 25 markets at the height of the season. And while it’s an enormously successful wholesaler and direct marketer, it doesn’t do nearly as well overall at farmers’ markets as Stout would like. It could be because an employee, instead of the farmer, is the person developing relationships with customers. It could be market saturation,  or perhaps the difficulties of scaling up staffing, displays and delivery operations.

“Things get frayed on the edges,” Stout says.

For all their popularity, and despite the fact that many farmers’ markets accept food stamps and WIC market coupons—and recent small-scale Seattle University studies show favorable apples-to-apples price comparisons with supermarkets—farmers’ markets still get saddled with an elitist reputation. Less than 1 percent of agricultural products are sold directly to consumers via outlets such as farmers’ markets and roadside stands, according to the USDA. Draw in more customers, the Seattle players agree, and the farmers, the producers—and healthy new markets—will wholeheartedly follow.

Originally published in June 2010