The Farmers Market Manager’s Friday Night Spiral (And how to Break the Cycle)
It’s 11 pm on a Friday. Tomorrow is market day. You’re lying awake in bed, unable to sleep, running through a mental checklist regarding tomorrow’s market day. Did Luisa confirm her booth change? Are your vendors aware of what time they’re supposed to arrive at the market tomorrow? Did you actually remember to tell Sam […]
Hot Take: Farmers Markets aren’t just Retail. They’re Infrastructure.
When most people think about farmers markets, their minds go straight to the products they can purchase there. They may associate their neighborhood market with fresh produce right from the source, homemade baked goods, or hand-poured candles. There is nothing wrong with that association. After all, a farmers market is genuinely one of the best […]
What It Actually Costs to Run a Weekly Market
Every Saturday morning, members of your community wake up with a specific goal in mind: a visit to their local farmers market. No one can blame them… it’s the perfect start to a relaxing weekend after a long week of work. Fresh produce, handmade jewelry, baked goods, and bright bouquets of flowers draw a wide […]
How to Optimize Your Farmers Market Booth Layout for Better Foot Traffic (Whatever Shape You’re Working With)
It’s 7:45 on a Saturday morning. Your vendors are set up, the coffee is hot, and shoppers are already trickling through the gate. Everything looks great, until you notice what always happens: they walk straight through, buy from the two or three booths they already know, and leave in under 20 minutes. It doesn’t matter […]
Hot Take: Market Managers Are Brand Builders, Not Just Business Owners
Picture a busy Saturday morning at your local farmers market. The smell of fresh bread, the towers of strawberries, the easy feeling of a community doing what communities do best. It looks effortless. It isn’t. Someone built that — and they were up at 5am to make it happen. Market managers don’t just run events. […]
CASE STUDY: From Operational Chaos to One Unified System. How a Multi-Market Operator in Indiana Streamlined Vendor Management with Hivey
If your market operations still live across forms, spreadsheets, and inboxes — you’re not scaling. You’re managing chaos. That’s where most multi-market operators end up. The first market is fine. The second one stretches things. By the third, you’re holding a duct-taped backend together with sticky notes, browser tabs, and the kind of hope that […]
Where Did All the Vendors Go? The Farmers Market Recruitment Slump in 2026 (And What Managers Can Do About It)
It’s 9pm on Sunday. You’re at the kitchen table, laptop open to a vendor application spreadsheet, and the math isn’t mathing. You have 18 confirmed vendors for 30 spots. The market opens in six days. If this scene feels uncomfortably familiar, here’s the first thing you should know: it’s not just you, and it’s not […]
How to Stop Spending 30 Hours on Vendor Booth Assignments (And Use Software To Do It in Minutes)
If you’re a farmers market or pop-up market manager, booth assignment day probably looks something like this: A color-coded spreadsheet. A handful of sticky notes. A Canva map you’ve rebuilt three times. And somehow — despite all that effort — you still end up with two competing food vendors back-to-back and a vendor texting you […]
Why 100% Vendor Adoption of Your Event Software Matters
And why market managers are making the switch to Hivey Running a successful market or event isn’t just about curating the right vendors — it’s about keeping them. And keeping them starts with giving them tools they actually want to use. Yet, time and again, market managers invest in event management software only to find […]
Stop Chasing Vendor Payments: How Hivey’s Season Pass Transforms Farmers Market Billing
If you’re still emailing vendors, texting payment reminders, and juggling spreadsheets to track who’s paid — there’s a better way. Here’s what modern vendor payment management looks like. Ask any farmers market manager what their least favorite part of the job is, and there’s a good chance collecting vendor payments is somewhere near the top […]