New Orleans farmers’ market brings out the city’s food
lovers
By Kimberly
Warren
Managing Editor
New Orleans
may be known for its parties and parades, but a different kind of
party is bringing people out to interact with local farmers.
The Crescent City Farmers’ Market is held four times a week
all year long and attracts 3,000 people each week. More than 70 different
farming and fishing families participate in the market, said Richard
McCarthy, market director.
“Food is such an important part of New Orleans,” McCarthy
said. “In other towns, it might be that people want to by a
bushel of okra. In New Orleans, people want smaller volume. In the
tradition of making groceries (grocery shopping), people return to
that rhythm of buying fresh on a regular basis. The market is reconnecting
people to that traditional rhythm of buying on Tuesday what you need
and buying on Wednesday what you need.”
The interaction between consumers and producers is what makes the
farmers’ market such a viable economic mechanism for New Orleans,
McCarthy said.
“Growers and consumers are very much reconnecting and joyously
sharing in the sense of community that the market builds,” he
said. “This is in a city and started at a time when there was
a lot of suspicion between urban and rural. Eight years ago, asking
our farmers to come to New Orleans was like asking them to put up
a booth in Beirut. But now they have become connected with New Orleans.”
And the customers, too, have become connected with the farmers’
market. McCarthy said they have made it a point to gear their markets
toward the local customers.
“I think they (farmers’ markets) are the most humane scaled
way to rebuild local economies. They’re magical,” he said.
“Over the years, we’ve gotten more and more cultural tourists
– those seeking an authentic experience. We’ve gotten
them by categorically avoiding them and creating an institution that
serves local, and as a result, locals have been very loyal.”
Their customer base has changed from their first day open nine years
ago. At first, McCarthy said the customers were the cutting edge innovators
looking for the hippest thing in town: “the hardcore foodies.”
And today, their customers run the gamut and cross all lifestyle,
age and cultures lines.
But the range of local customers they get at the farmers’ markets
still depends on the neighborhood they are in. The market is held
in four different locations – a different place each day. And
those neighborhoods reflect the customers, which reflects what product
the farmers need to offer.
“Uptown, we see ladies in their tennis outfits shopping for
fresh cut flowers, basil for their garden, fresh fish and peppers
– and off they go,” McCarthy said. “Downtown, in
the French Quarter, it’s the edgy, artsy kids with tattoos all
over their bodies peddling in to get organic product.
“The farmers, what they have learned through the market is to
adapt to consumer trends.”
Chefs make up another group of the markets’ customers. And the
demands from chefs are different than the demand from the average
consumers, McCarthy said. But, chefs and growers are working together
to make the relationship profitable.
“Many of the chefs have hooked up with our farmers to plan growing
seasons around what restaurants are interested in,” he said.
“They’ll sit down now with seed catalogs and plan menus
and growing seasons with the farmers. It adds so much more to their
menu that they have a story to tell.”
Chefs also offer the Crescent City Farmers’ Market a marketing
promotion. Each week, the market will feature a different chef doing
an on-site cooking demonstration with one of the in-season products.
And, as an extra promotion, McCarthy said they ask the featured chef
to donate a gift certificate to their restaurant to be given away
as a door prize. By having customers sign up to win the door prize,
Crescent City Farmers’ Market has a mailing list 6,000 strong.
Another way they get more customers is through advertising and marketing
of their own. The market, McCarthy said, creates a sort of story smorgasbord
for journalists. The reporters from the local media outlets can come
visit with customers or vendors to get story ideas. For example, McCarthy
said, if a reporter knows a big freeze is going to occur, he can go
down to the farmers’ market and talk to a grower about how that
will affect the crop.
McCarthy said they also have several different advertising and promotional
efforts of their own.
“We cross the spectrum from the highest of the high tech to
the lowest of the low tech,” he said. “It’s important
to think strategically. We spend a lot of time and energy doing grassroots
marketing.”
They hand out leaflets in some of the different communities. They
also have a high-tech Web site (www.crescentcityfarmersmarket.org)
that allows them to reach all of their audience.
Some of their in-market promotions range a little more on the fun
side. From French Bastilles Day with a poodle parade to Take Your
Mama to the Track Day, each marketing strategy is designed to bring
more people into the market.
As the marketing and promotions bring in more customers, the markets
get busier and – sometimes, McCarthy said – can even seem
chaotic.
“Markets themselves are amazing incubators for business innovation,
leadership development and for bridging the gaps between urban and
rural – and that all happens in the whirling chaos of markets,”
he said. “It’s intentional chaos, but you wouldn’t
know it.”
McCarthy said that even though farmers’ markets can be a crazy
place to shop – from fighting for a parking space to trying
to get the best product – time after time, people come back
because they know that’s where they’ll find the best quality
produce. But more than that, it’s an experience.
“They (farmers’ markets) are an antidote to the cyber
space, commuter hell that most people live in,” McCarthy said.
“They (customers) just sort of unburden themselves of all that
24/7 stress and reconnect with people (farmers) whose lives makes
sense, whose work is hard, but at the end of the day have a sense
of completion, closure. We crave to connect to people whose lives
make sense.”
Customers connecting with farmers is not the only relationship the
Crescent City Farmers’ Market is forging. McCarthy said they
are able to work with legislators and government representatives to
get agriculture back into the light of public policy.
“These markets show that you can develop your economy and not
sacrifice your natural resources,” he said. “But, how
do you measure that when councils see this adorable, charming thing
that, ‘oh, my wife enjoys that’? The market has placed
farming in a very different light in public policy... it’s starting
to craft legislation that is supporting this niche agriculture.”
And to measure that economic success, those at the Crescent City Farmers’
Market have created the Sticky Economy Evaluation Device (SEED). SEED
measures the economic impact farmers’ markets have on the community
in which they are located.
“We look so casual and informal. Behind that informal, warm,
welcoming setting is real business development,” McCarthy said.
SEED supplies forms for vendors to survey their customers. For example,
the forms ask how many times the customer visits the farmers’
market; how much money they spent on that day; if they plan on shopping
elsewhere in the vicinity; if yes, how much they will spend in the
community; what the customer’s zip code is; and if the customer
is male or female. This data not only helps the vendors see how successful
they are at the market, but it also gives the farmers’ market
manager something to take to the Chamber of Commerce as evidence of
the markets impact.
“I think it’s really compelling to be able to speak in
the business terms why these markets are valuable and why they need
to be invested in,” McCarthy said. “The market is more
than just a market – when you see an iceberg, you see what’s
above the level and you say ‘wow, that’s great,’
but you don’t see all the stuff that’s happening below.”
More important than SEED, farmers’ market success is also measured
with the farmers themselves.
“The success of the market and the success of their (farmers’)
neighbors has rekindled the excitement in their farm. I think it is
creating a renaissance in agriculture,” McCarthy said. “The
farmer's kids who were running as far away from the farm as they could
are finding out that ‘wow, my dad is pretty cool – he’s
a farmer.’”
McCarthy said he only sees farmers’ markets like the Crescent
City Farmers’ Market becoming more popular and more successful
as time goes on.
“We’re still in the early days; give us 10 more years,
and our on-the-fringes-of-society project will have moved into the
center of mainstream,” he said. “The sort of blank stare
that legislators gave us in the beginning will soon be ‘I’ve
seen it; I’ve tasted it; I get it.’”
For more information, visit www.crescentcityfarmersmarket.org.
