A pilot project that saw the Guelph Farmers’ Market open its doors on Wednesday afternoons is soon to come to an end, but the city is already exploring the possibility of bringing the Wednesday market back next spring.
“All the vendors are really interested and the customers are really interested,” said Anna Marie O’Connell, the city’s supervisor of parking and the farmers’ market. Though the numbers show a significant decline in both vendors and customers in September, a recent information report to council said the Wednesday market project “was deemed a success.”
Maintaining consistent interest in the Wednesday market is an important factor that will be taken into consideration when determining whether or not it will run again next year, she said.
Determining whether there should be a Wednesday market on an annual basis – one that would likely run from May to October – was always the goal of the pilot project, said O’Connell.
The project began on June 20, with the market running Wednesdays from 3 to 7 p.m. The original end date for the pilot was to be Aug. 8, but the city and the market executive committee jointly decided to extend the project to the end of October based on positive response from both customers and vendors.
As part of their assessment, city staff and the market executive tracked the number of vendors each week and compared those numbers with the numbers at the Saturday market. They also tracked the total number of customers and looked at whether the city’s public works department was operating at a loss or a profit.
The city’s goal was not necessarily to make a profit by the market, but “we have to break even,” said O’Connell.
There were no minimum thresholds for the numbers of vendors or customers, but operating at a loss “would cause the pilot project to be put into jeopardy,” the report said.
The project was funded through the selling of space to the vendors. “Throughout the entire pilot project, there was never a week that there was a net operating loss to the public works department budget line,” the report said.
There was a drop-off in numbers, though. The largest number of vendors was July 25 at 43 vendors – 48 per cent of the Saturday market. That day saw the greatest revenue for the public works department at $340, and the second most customers at 944.
The most customers came on Aug. 22 at 957.
The lowest numbers came in September, with the Sept. 12 market having only 25 vendors and $51 in profit. The fewest customers – only 482 – came on Sept. 19.
A typical Saturday market attracts between 3,000 and 4,000 customers daily, the report said.
City staff intend to consult with the Guelph Farm-ers’ Market Executive and other community stakeholders over the winter to determine if the market should go ahead during the same time frame in 2013, it said.