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Million Dollar Markets

Market Makers… There’s a secret mafia running all of Seattle’s farmers markets. I mentioned them in a previous email (Very Good Waffles). I was being recruited to join their vendors, but was just getting started and was ultimately too broke to scale up my waffle biz at the time. Turns out, it really does take money to make money.

But what if you OWNED the farmers market? As a market vendor, the business was simple. You pay a monthly fee to the market owner to be in the market and a percentage of your sales after every week. The better you do, the better the market owner does.

Running a market has costs, MANY COSTS

💰 leasing land and parking spaces for visitors and vendors

💰 land prep, tables, electricity, signage, etc

💰 maintenance and cleaning

💰 advertising and merch

💰 insurance

So how would you build out the mother of all markets? 👇

The MVP (Minimum Viable Product)

Hawkin hoagies… There’s a central business with a parking lot somewhere that’s closed on Sundays. Sundays also happen to be a great day for a farmers market. Closed biz on Sunday 🤝 Farmers Market. Banks, Hobby Lobby, Chic-Fil-A, Libraries, Doctors Office, etc.

So why is this important?

A parking lot is just a farmers market waiting to happen

These businesses aren’t making any money on the days they are closed. Reaching out to them and proposing to host a market on their lot for additional weekly revenue, at no cost or effort on their part is VERY enticing.

Now that you have the space, time to get some vendors. This is the fun part. The trick is to find up and coming vendors willing to try out new spaces (like a farmers market). These will be food, produce, crafts and non alcoholic beverages (for licensing reasons). I would start with a flat price ~$50 to have a space at your market.

At this point, we still have not spent $1. So where are we now?

✅ Space

✅ Vendors

❌ Customers?

The final piece are the suckers patrons, who will be funding this whole thing. Surprisingly, this is pretty easy. You can target the followers and customers the vendors already have. As well as add some local signage around the hood.

If you can get ~8 vendors at your market thats (8 x $50) $400 in your pocket and we’re still looking at less than $100 in spend 😍 

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Scaling Up

Mo markets, mo problems… Growing this business is costly. As you get bigger, you need better insurance, more volunteers, bigger space and vendor management.

I would add an “experience” factor. Something to wow the public, make them want to take pictures, and share with their friends.

Some experience ideas:

• Small petting zoo: $500

• Stilt Walkers: $200

• Inflatable Projection Screen for gaming: $500

• Giant Corn hole: $200

The experience factor is an added cost that you could recoup a couple of different ways; Up charging the vendors for being there and/or up charging the customers (entry fee)

Having a “premium” offering means people will spend more and you can get higher quality vendors. 

The End Goal

The market of markets… Owning multiple markets in your city can be highly lucrative. You could have Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday markets in various neighborhoods as well as winter, summer, Christmas, markets. Throw in “specialty” markets, beer market, wine market, fresh produce market, you name it.

Once you have the blueprint for setting up, security, managing vendors and volunteers, you can start printing money.

Focus on branding is 🔑 . When you have the “experience” market, you can start to franchise to other cities.

One company that is nailing this is Bacon, Eggs and Kegs. Now operating in 3 cities, they have a premium offering, solid branding, and something every city will want; a watermelon keg 🤯 

Their “experience” factor; “you'll find a 16 Ft Inflatable Skillet where you can live out your dream of becoming one with bacon.” 🥓 

Viability:

1 [building spaceships] 🚀 to 5 [easy peasy] 😊 

Free food… After researching this business, it’s something that I personally would love to do. As this business builds, it gets challenging very fast. So you would need to build out your team because this is no solo project.

This business wouldn’t make the most money starting out but can scale to a huge enterprise within a few years once you get your processes in place.

(As usual each business will have it’s own setbacks, and it’s all about the execution and consistency rather than just having the idea 😉)

It’s a great day to be great!

Love, Mike 👋