Market Manager Relationships & Financial Incentives in D.C. Farmers’ Market Spaces
Interviewer(s): Interviewer
Interviewee(s): Respondent

Respondent: So um, ya know, again I’m just going to blather away for a little bit and then you can channel me where you think is the most productive.

Interviewer: Yea, sounds great.

Respondent: But um, first of all, when you talk about the communication and relationship between the market managers and the farmers and the market managers and the customers, we’re a small market so literally the relationships become relationships. You know.

Interviewer: Yea.

Respondent: Um

Interviewer: And what does that mean?

Respondent: So, like we had one uh farmer, actually two farmers, a gay couple. One would come to the market and one would focus on the farm, for a time. And after one of them had a stroke they stopped farming, and got married and um – you know – we went to their wedding. That kind of thing. And Michael – you talked to Michael?

Interviewer: Yea, he was wonderful.

Respondent: Mhm. Yea. The um, again, because it’s a small market you really rely on the farmers so much. You can only have a couple farmers, maybe two or three at a time, before you’re oversaturated. Otherwise you have all these farmers and no one can make money and they’ll widdle themselves down to one or none if you aren’t paying attention. And so every decision of any great import, like whether we’re going to close for rain, I’ll call the farmers up and ask for their opinion. Because if they’re not going to come I’m not going to open the market; there’s not going to be any produce. So there’s a lot of that back and forth. There are certain things of course that I don’t necessarily consult with them about, just inform them about. Um

Interviewer: And what’s an example of that?

Respondent: Yea, okay, an example of that would be that if um we decided um we were going to limit uh the bonus bucks to ten dollars per week per customer then we don’t ask them if it should be fifteen or twenty, if they’d rather us run out earlier in the season or not, we sort of just make a decision about that and um we know that if we don’t limit it then we’ll run out sooner. And we don’t want to run out sooner so. Those kinds of things. With the customers, again with a small market, historically we’ve run an average anywhere from 50 customers a day – which is extremely slow – to 250 for a day – which is on a high end – that’s when we’re rolling you know

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: Because, partly because I think we have long hours historically and we’re thinking of shortening them up in the future a little bit. We start opening at nine and closing at two which is five hours of the market being open which is a little bit long for markets around here by one or two hours. And when you elongate a market that’s getting 150 customers a day for four or five hours that’s thirty customers an hour, at no time does it feel terribly crowded. Um. And so there’s plenty of time to chit-chat with customers to find out – and if you’re smart you can do reconnaissance that way – you can find out what their habits are shopping wise, what the situation is at home, that kind of thing. Um, and we do get a lot of repeat customers, customers who – we’ve moved so many times over the years and um we haven’t always been perfect with being able to send out notices to people that we have their addresses, unless they have email of course that’s perfect. But as far as sending postcards to their physical addresses, not everyone has given us their information but they find us you know.

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: So [pause] one really good example of something, we’re, that solved a problem for the market. Many years ago we were kind of the forefront of DC for having an EBT machine

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: And the EBT machine is really great for people on the SNAP program of course, but people knew we had the machine there and we didn’t charge them a machine for using it but we found that we were low on transaction going through the EBT machine. So if we would get $50 a day that would be a good day, sometimes less, ya know. Sometimes more, sometimes less. What I began to realize is that people that had SNAP would tend to have the WIC Farmers Market Coupons, nowadays you have the – well you have the Seniors – CVV but they have the prescription… you know the produce prescription. But in recent years, the past three years or so there’s been Produce Plus. It’s free money and it’s even broader in terms of the benefits they have to qualify for it. And everybody wanted to use those exclusively and hold on to their SNAP money for the supermarket. And their buying habit would be, they would load up their card and make the big purchases as soon as their card got loaded up each month. They would go out to the supermarket and wipe out the card with one big shopping – one big shopping spree

Interviewer: With the EBT Card?

Respondent: Yea, exactly. What does that mean if… that food is meant to last them all month. It means they’re buying frozen, canned. Nothing fresh. So they were coming us to fresh for a little bit but mostly buying other stuff um and then we realized that we we started putting out some marketing and educational materials like you know – save 25% of your SNAP uh value for the market. And by the way, you can use that when we have the bonus bucks program to double your dollars. Why waste your SNAP money at Giant when you can get to double the value and get fresh produce? So. That helped. And, and, like a lightbulb went off in people’s heads about not leaving something at the table with the bonus bucks. Another thing when we can manage to do it is to have other things besides fruits and vegetables that qualify for SNAP and that qualify for the funding we have, or have had in past years, for bonus bucks.

Interviewer: And what are items like that?

Respondent: So um there’s, and this may be pushing the envelope but we pushed it, there’s a lady that’s a farmer out in Virginia that grew aloe

Interviewer: Okay

Respondent: And she extracts the juice from the aloe and it’s consumed as a beverage instead of something that’s topical. Ya know she says it has medicinal purposes [laughs] but we’ll leave that for the customer to figure out themselves. But um, but um, uhh so that’s one example. We’ve had um – we’ve tried to get someone to sell cheese

Interviewer: Yea, like eggs or something

Respondent: Yea we haven’t been able to get a cheese person. We have gotten people at different times to come and sell eggs. That has been, that has been severely, that’s been made impossible for us in recent years.

Interviewer: Mhm

Respondent: Because of regulations that have come into place. Eggs crossing state lines now is a big thing.

Interviewer: Oh, interesting, okay.

Respondent: So if our farmer is in Pennsylvania, we had a Pennsylvania farmer that would bring eggs every week, then that person would have to register with the USDA and the DC Health Department and it would become…

Interviewer: A burden?

Respondent: A burden and something that they uh that they just don’t do. They’ll sell their eggs in Pennsylvania instead of here. And we had a farmer in Maryland, same deal. So now we have no eggs. But [laughs] but um, um, yea I mean in general too, it’s pretty much common sense but, we realized that if we could make it closer to a one-stop shopping experience than we could attract more money who would then spend more money obviously, which would then in turn help us to attract different, or retain more and different types of vendors. Which makes a more lively environment which, again and again and again, as you go back – you grow the market into a destination that’s not just a place you have to schlep to get some vegetables. “I don’t feel like going to two places this week, I’ll just go to Giant,” you know. Um, so ya know um, I don’t know if you want me to talk a little bit about the various programs we’ve had and what’s worked and what hasn’t or communications?

Interviewer: Yea, I think like focusing on relationships, so what does that communication look like, um, a specific example of talking with a farmer or working with a farmer around an issue or a real strength of an incentive program – it can be matching, it can be produce plus. Um, uh, just any communication that’s happened with a farmer?

Respondent: With a farmer?

Interviewer: A farmer or a producer

Respondent: So, the, my experience has been that the farmers and producers don’t really care how a program works as long as it brings them more money [laughs]

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: I know that sounds simplistic, it is, but it’s true.

Interviewer: They are a business

Respondent: They’re, yea, they’re a business, their business just happens to be trying to eek out a living but it’s still a living you know. They probably don’t even think in terms of profit and losses, they just think in terms of how much money do I have this month to live. The uh…so okay, I’ll make a broad statement and then an exception. So, in a broad way, they’re incentivized whether you have a buy-back program where you buy back leftover produce from them, or whether you have a bonus bucks where their customers can buy more – maybe twice as much. Um, or whether you’re giving customers free money like produce um um produce plus. Um or whether, again free money, whether it’s WIC or Seniors’ coupons or CVV. Having said that, they, they um, ya know I’ve had conversations where they get frustrated sometimes about how some of the programs run. In terms of what does and what doesn’t qualify for some programs. And it’s frustrating for them sometimes just because it’s confusing. Yea we’ve tried to always have real farmers who are growing their stuff locally, so if that’s the case you don’t have anyone selling pineapples. So in that case you don’t have to worry if one coupon will work for it and another one wouldn’t, but if we did have pineapples that would be the case. Ya know, and and they, and they get confused. So we have had farmers who, not recently, but we have had farmers who have supplemented things they grow with things they pick up from other places or whatever. And we’ve had to say no, ya know, you can’t sell that. Or you can sell that here but you can’t accept this benefit for it, okay. Like the WIC Farmers Market coupon is more restrictive like that, it has a list of things you can and cant use. Other complaints I have from farmers, or communications I have with farmer’s I should say. The produce plus checks, we don’t just accept produce plus, we’re also a distribution center

Interviewer: Yes

Respondent: So last year, the one that most recently ended was actually pretty good. The people that were coming were also using their coupons there.

Interviewer: Right

Respondent: But from the beginning of the program, and especially the year before last, when we had not such a good location and only had one farmer that was only half hearted into it, we had a point where more than half of the people coming to pick up the checks – the produce plus checks – and not using them there. And so the farmer would see lines of people lining up to get the benefit and then leaving; saying “oh I’m off to RFK.” And by the way RFK doesn’t have a lot of real farmers, it has more people who are going to Jessup and places and bringing their boxes and selling them. Ya know, for profit between the two. Um. And so it is a little bit disheartening when you’re trying to actually support real farmers and people are telling you, “I’m going to RFK because it’s much bigger and there’s much more options, and I can get grapefruits and pineapples and oranges there, and banana’s – why don’t you have bananas.” So, um, ya know sometimes it’s hard to be a little bit of a purist; I try not to be too pure because I’m not trying to defeat the purpose but um I think that’s a point right there.

Interviewer: And um, when farmers come to you with these um communications where they’re either expressing concern about customers leaving market or if they’re expressing concern about a program, or confusion, yea, what does your response as a a like market manager, what does that response look like for Ward 8’s farmers’ markets?

Respondent: Yea, so. Farmers are a peculiar lot, kind of like engineers.

Interviewer: They are

Respondent: And some of them, not all of them, but a lot of them are semi-literate, maybe not literate at all. Mm we’ve had farmers who were not really good with counting. And so you have to be, you know, you really have to to handle them with great care. Because you can’t talk down to them, because they are a peculiar lot and they will take offense very easily. And um you know, I guess especially if somebody is illiterate that might be a sore spot for them. So when you try to explain that the coupon says that you can’t accept something for it you have to word that carefully. Like “I know this is really small print” because they’re not telling you they’re illiterate, they’re not telling you that, “I know this is really small print and maybe you didn’t notice it but it actually says you can’t accept that.” So, you know, you uh – a lot of interpersonal skills are very helpful if you want to keep the farmer. Now having said that, what I just said is most important in a place like Ward 8 where it’s really heard to attract farmers. If you’re doing the DuPont circle farmers’ market you can treat the farmer anyway you want to and their making big time money so they wont care. But here we’re always wooing them, not the other way around. So let’s see let’s see, what else. We’ve talked about programs and communicating. I’m trying to remember some specific instances where we were talking about programs. Back to the thing about Produce Plus - But I hope that the farmers didn’t notice it, of course farmers do notice everything.

Interviewer: They do

Respondent: And of course the worst possible reaction and for some reason we get blamed that they’re leaving when the reality is that maybe the farmer could do a better job of presentation, that instead of small numbers, widdling numbers, by a drastic reaction of bringing less produce, and putting less out because you don’t want to have to pack it up at the end of the day, they need to fight that instinct and put on a big display so that maybe people are more engaged and wont go elsewhere. But while to some people that might seem like common sense it really isn’t. Now, this is less about the program but it’s kind of a side effect. A lot of farmers are worried about spoilage, they don’t want to put their stuff out in the hot sun. That’s why they have the tents of course. Um, and they really don’t want to accept what I believe is a marketing truism. If you look like you don’t want to sell much stuff you’re not going to sell a bunch of stuff. But anyway, that’s a peculiar thing to a small market. The the um prescription program has been difficult for us because you need to have a partnership with a physician.

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: There are a couple of times, like when we were at the Arc on Mississippi when we thought we had this relationship before the season started, with a physician that worked with the Children’s Hospital program over there. It turns out that that person was diverted to another, at the Arc, a prescription program. So it was meant to benefit the whole Arc but really it was only utilized for this program, the garden you know.

Interviewer: Right

Respondent: And so when they do show up with them and um, we can take it but people generally only – each market has to have a relationship with the prescribing doctor or else people don’t know where to go with it. They’re not told where to go with it. And we haven’t actually received, we used to receive them the first few years, last year I don’t think we had a single person try to bring it to us. And the year before either, so I don’t know what’s happened to that program, it’s a programmatic thing that has to do with the farmers I guess. Kind of spontaneously, I’m trying to think of some things, we may not to go into recuse on this. In terms of kinds of discussions with farmers about programs. Um. The, with the bonus bucks and bonus bucks is not – historically for us it hasn’t been tied to any one grantor by the way. Wholesome Wave was our first, no I take that back, uh Capitol Food Bank was the first that allowed us to have bonus bucks, then Wholesome Wave, and then the Finnie the USDA Finnie grant came along and finished out everything as far as we were concerned. So we had, we haven’t had it in a couple of years. Okay, it’s neither here nor there maybe… a couple of years DC Greens decided that they were going to apply for everybody, which is how we got off of the bandwagon with wholesome wave. Wholesome wave deferred to DC Greens, DC Greens did not get that grant, and we got bumped off and we haven’t had bonus bucks since. But when we had, there was always this issue of whether people were stealing, basically, by recycling bonus bucks. Okay. Um so originally the bonus bucks were just this little piece of paper, we would take card stock – 8 and a half by 11 – have it printed three times and then have it sliced, ya know, and that was your bonus bucks. And the customer would have to come to the table first; and this was, basically the way the grantor wanted us to do it. So you would come to a table, show the benefit they were supposed to be tied to, I guess they weren’t recycling the bonus bucks they were recycling something else but… tied to a benefit, a benefit would be tied to the bonus bucks. So let’s say I have 15 dollars in WIC Farmer’s market coupons, that would allow me to get $15 in bonus bucks. They show us the coupons, “oh okay, that’s what you’re gonna use, fine,” we give them the 15$ in bonus bucks then they go to the farmer. Well, um, the farmer had no way of policing and was interested in policing whether or not the person was actually going to spend those WIC farmers market coupons at the same time as the bonus bucks. In part because we have more than one farmer, they might spend 15 of the bonus bucks here and the coupons with another farmer okay? And so it was quite possible for someone on a busy day to come to your table, show you $15 in farmers market coupons, take the bonus bucks, take those farmers market coupons home and bring ‘em back next week and do the same thing all over again with the same farmers market coupons. Or conceivably in the same day later on in the day, okay?

Interviewer: Okay

Respondent: And we, the farmers, when we tried to talk to the farmers about this being a problem they tried to cooperate, and you know they want to be team players but at the same time they have no incentive to defeat that. You know, as long as the money is coming in its all good, it’s all gravy to them. So we eventually started writing down the ID numbers on each coupon um as if – to that we would necessarily be able to, you know, be able to pair them up like that – but psychologically we made the customer think that maybe we could. I don’t know if that worked but it made us feel psychologically better. One time we had this volunteer who was working who actually caught somebody. Um. Um. The, the, the, market, the farmers, when they get frustrated with the customers – again I don’t know how this ties in or if this ties in or what you’re looking for – when they get frustrated with a customer and they’re trying to tell someone something they can or cant do with a benefit the customer gets mad and the farmer gets mad and the customer is yelling at the farmer or vice versa or both. That’s what when the farmer will usually flag me or whoever is there in the market, to intercede. And um, you you you gotta get the correct information. Or try to get the best correct information. At the same time you don’t want to add any – the customer or the farmer – so you cant seem to be taking anyone’s side but the farmer is looking for you to take his or her side. Because we’re buddies right? We’re working together in the same market. They feel as though we’re on the same team and the customer is this sort of semi-alien person. So that’s pretty difficult to navigate too.

Interviewer: And what does kind of that interaction with a customer on the other end…

Respondent: that same conversation

Interviewer: Yea, the same conversation, what does that look like?

Respondent: Yea, okay

Interviewer: How do you approach that situation?

Respondent: So I meant his happened many times. We’ll start with an example where the farmer’s wrong.

Interviewer: Okay

Respondent: The farmer’s wrong. You understand the question first… um… let’s say um the farmers wrong because the farmer believes that um the person cannot use this coupon because it’s not the same person that’s listed and they don’t understand that the person says an ID that says they’re allowed to sign for their disabled loved one. So you go over and the farmer explains to you why he would not take this, “look John I’m just trying to do the right thing, I’m just trying to obey the rule. You told me to obey the rule.” Then the customer tells you, “well I have this ID, blah blah blah.” So then you go, “Yea I really appreciate t, farmer Jones, whatever, that you’re looking out and trying to the right thing. You’re absolutely right, that is the rule. There’s a, there is an exception. This doesn’t come up very option and I don’t think you’ve seen it yet but this is that exception. This lady’s ID is legitimate and she is able to sign for her husband.” And you know, you try to say – I really appreciate the fact – you really stress that you appreciate the fact that he’s following the rules and looking out and how smart he is for doing that. And you take the customer aside after that and say, “sorry for your inconvenience, sorry that Mr. or Ms. Customer that um that there was this confusion. Um, and then depending on the farmer, if you think the farmer is calm and is now apologizing to the customer the may his or herself offer some kind of a reward to the customer like an extra apple or something. Or you might feel emboldened to ask the farmer if he or she might be willing to do that. If you think the farmer is still agitated than you take the customer aside and you say, um, “I’m gonna give you one extra bonus buck today” or whatever, “I’m so sorry for your trouble, so sorry about that, blah blah blah.” And that usually settles them down pretty well. Customers are funny though, um, again I’m gonna stray away – a little bit away – from strictly a benefit related thing here.

Interviewer: Sure

Respondent: I remember at one point as a part of offering a more holistic environment uh you know, more of a one shop kind of deal, we couldn’t find any bakers – we could retain any bakers – we would have bakers that would come for a couple of weeks and then leave. But we wanted – we figured bread was a good way to – your half way there if not the whole way there. So we would get up in the morning and go to a baker, Uptown bakers, uh and get bread and bring it down. And Uptown doesn’t use preserves and you know, it’s baked fresh each day. And one week this woman comes up and says, “Sir I hope you’re going to refund my money.” And she pulls out this loaf of bread that is totally green. I look at her and I say, “you didn’t get that from us.” And this is the morning right, so, even though I should know what was wrong it doesn’t make any sense in my mind. I thought, there’s no way she can be bringing me last week’s bread which was in fact what she was doing. She said, “this went bad on me.” I said, did you refrigerate it? She said no. I said, this is not like wonder bread you can’t just leave it out on the table. I educated her this whole thing about, freshly baked bread, she had no clue. The questions of whose… I felt like I had to give her another loaf to keep her from giving up on freshly baked bread. Of course she complained again a week or two later that the same thing happened. And I didn’t give her another loaf [laughs] so its not so easy, to give people a message that they’re resistant to hearing. Um. Similar types of things happened with – that one just sort of sticks in my mind – but similar types of things happened with benefits where customers. I think maybe it may happen more at our market than other markets.

Interviewer: Sure

Respondent: Where messaging doesn’t get through very clearly. Where something is misunderstood that you think you perfectly clearly explained before. And you can’t keep giving second chances because frankly, there is a large enough percentage, there are people out there, that will do you in if you cater to it. Which is trying to game the system. People who, quite frankly, have grown up in a culture that the only way to survive and get by is to constantly game the system you know. So , you know, God bless them or whatever you know if we’re gamed we’re gonna not survive too.

Interviewer: Yea, it’s a reality on both ends

Respondent: It is a reality. We’re not Daddy Warbucks you know

Interviewer: Yea. Yea, and how do you how do you communicate with – like how do you communicate with a customers who trying to use the same coupons two weeks in a row or trying to take advantage of the Produce Plus line or you know, any of those things. How do you communicate around that?

Respondent: Now one thing I will say, and this may be counter intuitive to some people but I think our customers here in Ward 8 are more polite than in other parts of the city. We have very little problem, even with really long line, with cutting. Yea, you get sometimes people feel like they should be treated faster or better or others, but it’s very minor and um. Produce Plus in particular, last year, we had incredible lines. We started opening last year at 10 instead of 9, and people would show up at9 or even 8:45 anyway while we were still setting up in order to get Produce Plus checks. And it was hot, we would, eventually we began setting up a tent just for people to wait under over there for people who would wait for their Produce Plus. Um. I think there was a rule that we weren’t really supposed to – maybe it was an old rule – that we weren’t really supposed to give out the checks until the market opened and they would sit there and chat. And we would get like 40 people waiting and so we had to develop a system where we took these tokens – trying to remember why this wasn’t dangerous, it was dangerous – these were tokens that were worth money. They were like Sears tokens or whatever but still they could have easily been pocketed and taken back out and we could have lost big money. Anyways, someone had the bright idea to write numbers on the back of the tokens for your place in line and we would have customers would help by – when somebody came to the market that was waiting that hadn’t checked in with us – they would direct them to the front to get their tokens. It was very cooperative, community-like, customers. That, you know. Yea, you know, they will [ laughs ] they’ll get mad at us and say, “it’s only because this is Ward 8 that you’re treating us this way,” you know [laughs] and I’m like, “ma’am I am from Ward 8 too.” But its hard. They’re actually really warm and giving people who don’t want to cheat their neighbors. Even if they game the system, they don’t want to game their neighbors you know.

Interviewer: Yea and can you, I guess I’m curious about something you said, that customers are more polite than in – here in your market- than perhaps in other areas of the city. And I’m interested by that idea and I’m interested in the idea of the community that you’re talking about that’s being built. And I guess I’m wondering what that looks like and what the market manager role or your role in that is, and yea what position in that you play?

Respondent: So, so, I’m technically, even though I have managed market in years and do do market manager things, you know I’m the um I’m the chair of the board

Interviewer: You’re the big guy, yea

Respondent: Well I don’t know if I’m the big guy or not but I’m the volunteer. Alright. So we’ve have two paid market managers in our existence… well it depends on how you look at it. For a short while. I’ll take that back there was three. There was a woman, I wont name names. Oh, what difference does it make. There was Michael, who you’ve met or at least met online. Okay. He’s white.

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: And our last market manager was white, Nathan. In between, for a very short period of time we had Jeanette who Michael had recruited. She didn’t last very long, maybe a month and a half or two. And, because that – okay, so there’s a little bit of an awkwardness in a place like Congress Heights that’s a little bit, even though it’s going under a little bit of gentrification if you will, it’s still probably ninety – over 95% - black if not more. And and, has a reputation for being high in poverty and neglected. And um, and along with that goes with the concept that you know, if you see white people coming in it’s just to take advantage of the situation we’re in. Either they’re, what they’re sometimes called poverty pimps. Yea, see you know.

Interviewer: I’m familiar [laughs]

Respondent: Or they’re developers, looking to grab stuff, you know. And so there’s this huge amount of skepticism. And when you see a market that’s in Ward 8 and the top guy or gal is Caucasian, obviously, and in Michael’s case he didn’t even live in Ward 8, you know. So I think it was helpful to have a face, another face, an additional face, that they could be reassured – meaning customers – that this is not an outside-in, this is an inside-out. This is home grown, this from Ward 8, and there are also African Americans who are also in charge. Um, you know, I know we’re supposed to be moving towards a post-racial society and all of that but

Interviewer: [laughs]

Respondent: But recent events have told us that it’s not so easily obtained [laughs]. We might be moving that direction but

Interviewer: Yea, yea

Respondent: I’m old enough that I know, unlike some of my younger friends who have been discouraged by recent events, arcs take time. You get these sort of hiccups and stuff, and hopefully we are still moving them in a certain direction, but we aint there yet. And especially in neighborhoods like this. African Americans in Bowie Maryland, which is mostly African American but is much richer, are going to have a very different reaction. They’re not going to be as sensitive about things, they’re not going to feel as if… and I don’t want to make this a blanket statement because I do know people that live in Bowie and they sometimes do feel that, “well you know we’re one of the richest counties in the country and yet we don’t have a proper, you know, proper amenities, why is that.” All these black millionaires and stuff. But still, that’s on a different level than feeling like you’re totally always neglected. The community, getting back to your core question about the community, I think there’s this feeling you know, there’s something about being in area where you’re always neglected, always in the news as being something negative, and you see the reality around you – people smiling, smiling faces – yea there are the guys out there who are selling drugs and shooting each other up, and even some of them are nice guys actually, strange as that might sound, paradoxical as that might be.

Interviewer: That doesn’t sound too strange

Respondent: Yea, um [laughs]

Interviewer: Everyone has a very complex reality I find

Respondent: Exactly. But um I think there’s a tendency for people to sort of come together, they don’t want to have enemies in the neighborhood or anywhere, their is this mixture of skepticism of a market in Ward 8 but also a gratefulness about it. And especially when they realize that its something that their own neighbors are trying to put together or hold together. That goes a long way in the sense of, “oh, okay, I guess this is something we’re all trying to do together. We should all work together about it and be understanding.” You know. So, yea, um…

Interviewer: To go back I think to, yea, the idea you mentioned – of you and Nathan working together, sharing power in a sense – um, in order to kind of bridge that gap between community and person – white person – in power. How, I mean I guess I’m wondering what you..

Respondent: how do you navigate that?

Interviewer: Yea, because that sounds complicated right? What’s the effect of Nathan instead of you handing someone a produce plus check. Yea, what role do you play, how do you navigate that space?

Respondent: Yea, so I don’t necessarily feel the need to assert myself as the person handing the checks for instance. I prefer to have Nathan do it because, especially after all these years of doing, I don’t like being trapped at the market every Saturday of the entire season. We only recently peeled it back but we used to be open basically half a year, well it was half a year – 26 weeks – that’s half a year.

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: Um. In heat and in cold [laughs]. So I don’t necessarily. Yes, I will staff the table and hand stuff out but I don’t like to be trapped there. By now, most people recognize me. And seeing me around reassures them that, no, there hasn’t been a hostile take over. It’s still a community based market. And I think that’s all that they’re looking for. And if there is some kind of problem or something, that they have someone they can go to. Unfortunately there have been times when an old, former, board member came to the market and wasn’t happy about something and Nathan interacted with her and she was very very unhappy and she says, “where’s John, I can’t believe John is letting this happen.” You know. And then a couple weeks later I saw her there and I explained the whole scenario to her and she calmed down, grumbled a little bit you know. [laughs] the other part of navigating that is that, it is rough because I’m sure if you asked Michael probably and confidentially he would admit that he probably, probably feels as though I micromanaged him And I think I did. But I felt at times as though at that juncture that I had to, or felt the need to because there was – before Michael got there were already many many years of market running and certain traditions in place and so forth – that I was super cautious about making sure that we had continuity and also a certain sensibility. Michael’s an extremely sensitive person but um…there’s a certain sensibility that we’ve had before that I felt we needed to project upon him. And sometimes that happened by my overruling him. Basically.

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: Even though I knew he had all the right intentions, and what he was doing conceivably could be good. It wasn’t the Ward 8 farmer’s market way. Or whatever, as I perceived it. And thought being that eventually that we would all be on the exact same page and then, then I wouldn’t need to micromanaged and over-rule.

Interviewer: That he would learn, yea.

Respondent: That he would observe and maybe come to agree on certain things.

Interviewer: Sure

Respondent: Yea, so um. You know micromanaging gets old too, I don’t like – I mean I can – I’ve been in business before. And I know that can be the death of your business too.

Interviewer: Are there other ways that you navigated that space with either him or Nathan?

Respondent: So I think I did less with Nathan than with Michael. Quite frankly, because Nathan has lived in Ward 8 for a few years now. So I trust that he has already adapted some of those sensibilities. But, like I said he did have that run-in with Miss Jennings. I never had a run-in with her, so I think she’s one of the many people who – you know – has this sort of skepticism, I don’t think she would necessarily say this but um you know you sort of have to prove yourself as a white person in this space to her. And most people don’t want to have to prove themselves to anybody. And in life you should have to, but in that particular moment that was where she was coming from and she wasn’t liking the particular reaction she got.

Interviewer: Yea, I think that race is an important factor if we’re talking about a financial incentive program in Ward 8. And especially when the market manager is white, that creates a very different space I think – or it can, it has the potential to depending on the market manager.

Respondent: There are more land mines. Yea.

Interviewer: I think navigating that space sounds tricky. So the techniques you used to do that, whether it was micromanaging or having a conversation by sitting someone down sounds important. And maybe that is something that seems ultra-specific to Ward8 but I think race relations are likely just as important with financial incentives in Northwest DC, or Northeast DC as they are here.

Respondent: you’re right, they’re very important anywhere. They’re stark here. There’s more of a social economic lock together and overlap. I may have difficulty myself sometimes, I’m African American but I don’t necessarily come from the same socio-economic background as some of our customers. And you know, but um, somewhere I was gonna go with that. Well there’s also the mentality though when you’re talking about Ward 8 African Americans – you have this skepticism on one hand. A lot of African Americans will also perceive something white as being better. So you know, it’s not all negative in a sense. Though in some ways it’s kind of a perverse benefit. They’ll say, ‘oh there are improvements coming to my ward because here is the proof of that.”

Interviewer: Yea, okay. Well, do you have anything else you want to share with me about interactions around the incentive programs?

Respondent: Um. [pause] The incentive programs, um, I guess you cant do anything about the fact that it’s so out in the open. Luckily in Ward 8 there are so many of our customers who are receiving the benefits that it takes away a part of the stigma. As opposed to a market in Georgetown or whatever where there might be many fewer. But always sort of regret when we have to – we don’t treat them differently but there’s no getting around the fact that they have this great big coupon in their hand or whatever. So I don’t know, that’s another navigation issue. We try to do anything we can to make sure that the customers that are receiving benefits, that threes a lot of dignity in it. It’s not like you came to a soup line or something, for a handout. We call it money. Stuff like that. Um. So yea I don’t know that I have anything particularly wise to say about it just that it’s an issue you need to be sensitive to when you’re dealing with the visibility of it and how it’s communicated. Even things like, there’s a line for bonus bucks. That’s an extra line somebody has to stand in. People actually, believe it or not, even though they’re getting something for free they get ticked off sometimes. You have to be on guide sometimes with workers, whether you’re paying them or whether they’re volunteers, if they take that negativity and shoot it back at the customer. And that’s a real thing if somebody’s giving you gruff and you’re trying to, in your mind, help them. You’re trying to help them then you know you need that person to understand that you have to treat them like they came here to spend a million dollars, you know, in a rolls Royce or whatever. And someone will say, “and I wouldn’t take stuff from that person either.” And well okay, in that case you turn that person over to me.

Interviewer: So there’s a sense of customer service is what I’m hearing? And hospitality?

Respondent: You try. But it’s hard though, because we also try to hire local so like there’s a position that only works on Saturday currently and that person helps to set up the tents and stuff and also interacts with customers, and helps them redeem their benefits and so forth. And when you’re dealing with somebody who will take that positon, you try to screen for someone whose customer friendly and so forth in a community way. But when rubber hits the road and you see how they actually interact, um, you know you have to keep taking the person to the side and explain to them how some people consider that to be rude. And they don’t get it. They don’t get how this expression on their face, like “you’re really bothering me,” it’s not necessarily saying anything. But there’s like an expression on their face like “ugh” and they might even sigh, and you know I’ve got my own and I’ve got uh one for my great uncle that I’m trying to redeem today “uhhhhh [sigh].” You know. Something like that. So um on the one hand you don’t want to lose your local person, that’s part of the mission, you’re trying to provide not only income for this person but also an opportunity to work in an environment they haven’t worked in before. They’re not digging a ditch or whatever, and maybe not selling drugs or whatever. That’s what they’re not doing. And they are doing a customer service job that they’ve obviously never done before. But at the same time you cant let the customer feel that you’re hiring people like this because it’s Ward 8.

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: So I mean, you know, we get applause sort of from some people like, “I really appreciate that youre hiring our young people here in the Ward.” And other people like, “you’ve got to do better, this person doesn’t treat customers right.” He may grumble, he may curse –which is a no, we tell them no you cant do that – but low and behold they do it anyways. So.

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: Anyways. So um I guess that’s all I have unless you have other questions.

Interviewer: No, this was wonderful, thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time for this.