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: 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 […]
3 Things Farmers Market Managers Should Set Up in the Offseason (Now) to Avoid Chaos
The most organized farmers markets don’t get that way by accident. They’re built in the offseason. If you’re a farmers market manager, the weeks (or months) before opening day are your biggest opportunity to prevent in-season stress. Once the market starts, you won’t have time to rebuild systems — you’ll just be reacting. Here are […]
You Posted “Vendor Applications Open” on Instagram. Now What?
You hit publish. Your carefully crafted Instagram post announcing “Vendor Applications Now Open” is live, complete with vibrant photos from last year’s market and all the essential details in your caption. Within minutes, the likes start rolling in. Comments flood your notifications. DMs ping constantly. Then reality hits: “How am I actually going to manage […]
Scaling Your Market From 20 to 200+ Vendors Without Losing Your Mind
So your market’s taking off. What started as a cozy weekend gathering with 20 vendors has evolved into something bigger, maybe 50, 100, or even 200+ vendors wanting in. Congratulations! That’s amazing. Also, terrifying. Because what worked when you knew every vendor by name absolutely will not work at scale. Here’s how to grow without […]
How to Choose the Best Software to Run Your Farmers Market
You’ve reached that point. The spreadsheets are multiplying, vendor emails are buried across three inboxes, and you’re pretty sure you just approved the same application twice. If managing your farmers market feels like drowning in admin work instead of building community, it’s time to consider market management software. But not all software is created equal. […]
Marketspread vs. Hivey: Why Hivey is the Smarter Choice for Market Management Software
Whether you’re an event organizer or a market manager, searching for tools to streamline vendor applications, payment processing, booth assignment, and overall vendor communication, you’ve likely come across Marketspread. In fact, many event planners who discover Hivey tell us they’re either currently using Marketspread or are strongly considering it. But once they try Hivey, the […]