Saturday, March 30, 2024

TOWN TALK: Farmers markets sell the experience

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On Friday mornings I like to pop down to our local market and grab some fresh fruit and veges and half a dozen tennis-ball-sized banana donuts.
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These deep-fried balls of banana badness are cooked by a Pasifika grandma in a bright yellow food truck. 

They’re a steal at 50 cents each and it’s the done thing to break one open immediately and eat it as you wander the market stalls.

Our local Wesley Market is a mix of bric-a-brac, produce, fresh fish and food trucks. 

It’s not always the producers themselves selling the goods but it’s a good place to experience a community market – it’s been going since 1994 and is Auckland’s largest mid-week market.

For me it’s the experience that matters. 

It’s about wandering down the road and choosing which stall to buy cucumbers from this week and to feel part of the neighbourhood. 

The organisation overseeing authentic farmers markets, Farmers Markets NZ (FMNZ), adds its stamp to markets that sell direct from producers to the public. It has 15 member markets under its banner and also welcomes individual stallholders who meet its standards. There are many more markets unaffiliated with FMNZ.

It just so happens the inaugural national Farmers Markets Week is coming up, March 10-17, to promote eating fresh and buying local.

“If you go to the market you can talk to the person who grew it. There’s no middle man, you know exactly what you’re buying,” FMNZ chairwoman Maggie Asplet says.

She sells preserves and free-range eggs at the Gisborne Farmers Market every Saturday and has a regular following of customers who go to the market for their weekly goods.

The Gisborne market has a cafe-style atmosphere with tables and chairs set up where people can sit and watch the world go by, listening to buskers.

At Wesley Markets shoppers can watch live cooking demonstrations that are filmed and later posted on a community Facebook page. It’s an initiative funded by the local board to show how to create quick and healthy meals from locally produced ingredients.

We have some institutions in Auckland that are on the tourist radar — the Avondale Sunday Market is the country’s biggest one-day market while the Otara Flea Market sells everything from fresh produce to poke and Island donuts and La Cigale Market in Parnell and Britomart offers a French-inspired experience.

Out of town, Matakana Farmers Market is a popular day-trip destination in itself.

In Auckland going to a market is more likely an occasional outing rather than a regular visit to stock the fridge. 

There’s no doubt that the success of these markets is in the authentic experience they provide alongside fresh produce and goods.

Farmers markets are thriving and if they can keep selling the experience they’ll be propping up local economies for some time yet.

Aside from providing a local shopping experience, markets can be a good test bed for small businesses wanting to find out how their product is perceived before opening a shopfront or online sales. Shoppers can ask direct questions, as can the stallholders.

Though FMNZ doesn’t collect data on stallholders’ market day earnings, the amount of money firing out of the Eftpos on market days gives the organisation an idea of what kind of dollars are collectively spent. 

It can be in the realm of $10,000 a market and leading up to Christmas one Waikato market sees double that amount through its cash-out till.

That’s an experience well sold.

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