May 27, 2009

This week Tracie and her family went out of town, so it was up to me to pack up everything and go to market by myself on Wednesday! Of course I was really nervous. I was mostly worried about forgetting something important that would violate a health code, like ice packs. I did forget the lemonade samples and the ice for the lemonade bucket...but both of those things were niceties rather than necessities. So in the end I had done an okay packing job.

Wednesday afternoon rolled around packing was the least of my worries. It was raining. Hard. I called Tracie and she told me about the Hour-By-Hour forecast on weather.com and it said it was going to clear up by 2 pm. So, my gracious boyfriend and I went and loaded everything up in the rain, believing it would be over by the time we arrived at market. It lasted a little longer than we had expected. I didn't get set up until 2:30, but after that the weather was very nice. The rain had actually scared away some vendors. About three of the ones from Draper St. were not there. But there was still a fair showing.

At first business was extremely slow. But at around 4 pm it really started to pick up. I think people were anxious to get outside since it had been raining for a couple of days. We did okay business. I think it hurt a little that there was a driveway between me and all the other vendors and the vendors on the other side of me were not there. I looked a little unestabilshed. But as always Tracie's high quality products prevailed. I sold out of the blackbean hummus and all but one of the giant chocolate chip cookies. Tracie made a little bread for this Wednesday market, per the request of some customers last week, and those customers did show up and buy bread. I think it felt good on both ends of those transactions. I thought it was cool to be able to work so cooperatively with the customers. Several lemonade bottles were returned, which was appreciated. While scones, power cookies and muffins rule the morning market, the afternoon market sales lean more towards the grocery items. People mostly buy hummus and bread. And it looks like they will be oscillating between the cookies and the brownies for their weekly indulgence. I had a couple of people say that they were going to try one this week since they had the other last week. Lots of people asked about that sold out tapenade. ;o)

I broke a boundary for myself during the market. I usually don't interact too much with the other vendors. I'm just an intern after all. But I ran out of change and had to go to one of my neighbors for help. Luckily one of my neighbors was Jenny, the market manager. She's as nice as can be, so my experience was a good one. Her neighbor (I am sorry to say I did not catch his name) was lovely enough to help me out with my change situation.

I think the rush is usually at around 5 or 5:30 for Wednesdays. However, since most people started coming out around 4 it was pretty slow by 6 or so. So I waited until 6:30 before packing up a little earlier than when the market ends.

I went to trivia night with some friends, for some needed unwinding on Wednesday night, but I was so proud of myself for being able to handle all of that!