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

Interviewer: Alright. I wanted to ask you a few questions about your work as a market manager and your experiences overall. So I just want to get a ground work of what you take out of the job and um yea what it looks like for you before I dive in to the financial incentive piece? How long have you been a market manager in DC?

Respondent: So I’m not a market manager anymore, I did start as a market manager about four years ago in the Spring of 2015. So I did market management for about three years and during that time, you know, we did a matching incentive program at the markets so I learned how to do all of that. You know, taking EBT and helping people using WIC and senior farmers market benefits and issuing our matching tokens as well. Um and I also did outreach in the beginning doing some like, we would do say a women’s shelter or a service agency like bread for the city and do a really simple cooking demo and tell people about all of the places they can use their benefits at market and incentives to extend their buying power. Um. I sort of gradually took on more responsibility with the program. At this point I serve as the Director of Food Access Programs so I oversee all of this work. So that includes matching dollars, Produce Plus, as well as our matching program. Um and then I oversee our other programs as well, farmer support work. But yea so essentially we have been doing matching dollars since – we started doing the Produce Plus program in 2008 and the matching program in 2009 and we had very low turnout in the beginning and its very much gone up over time. I think last year we did, matched $59,000 in matching dollars approximately, so that includes SNAP and WIC and Senior benefits as well. Um. You’re probably familiar but we use a token system, lots of farmers’ markets use a token system, so we issue um, we use wooden tokens when they swipe their card and we use the same tokens for all the match. And then our tokens can be used at any of our markets, they never expire, and they are valid for any type of food available at the farmers’ market.

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: So that’s sort of it in a nutshell but feel free to ask me more detailed questions.

Interviewer: No absolutely. So how do you feel like, you said it seems that things have gone up over time and more people have started coming through do you think the program has just had more exposure or what do you attribute that do?

Respondent: I think it’s well established now and people know that it exists, they know it’s available, and not just at our markets but at a lot of markets across the city. I think there’s been a huge gain in, a.) the number of farmer’s markets in DC and the DC area has exploded in the past 10 years and as well, the number of markets that accept benefits and the number of markets that have incentive programs has just skyrocketed in the past several years. So it has become, it’s become much more well known and well established among the shoppers and the community that this program exists, it’s very common. They don’t know the difference most of the time necessarily between our matching program and bonus bucks at Columbia Heights and another program at Arcadia but they know that they can come and use their benefits and that they can probably make their benefits go a little further. Um so I think that’s part of it. I think a lot of us have done outreach work, we don’t do as much outreach work anymore partly because we’re stretched for resources. But in terms of actually conducting the outreach and in terms of, there’s only so much fundraising we can do in a year for matching dollars, which is a big hurdle we’ve come up against. And so like we can do a lot of outreach but there’s a limit to the number of customers we can serve at the end of the day unfortunately. We don’t do as much outreach anymore but I think, this kind of program, in terms of word of mouth spreads like wildfire.

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: I think that’s a lot of it. It’s the community talking to each other and advocating for themselves and figuring out the resources available.

Interviewer: Okay. I kind of want to talk to you about um not just how the incentives look and how they’re implemented but how they kind of um looks in relation to other people you’re working with. So, yea, if you just wanna tell me um a little bit about like how when you’re – or when you were – at market helping to operate programs how the team you had there like worked together to make the program run smoothly. Like what did that look like for you guys?

Respondent: So it’s essentially just woven in to the operations of farmer’s markets for us because we’ve been doing it for such a long time. Every market manager is trained on how the program works, how to talk about the program both with perspective customers and perspective donors. Um how to operate the program at market, and we try to keep each other up to date. If we’re having a fundraising shortfall or a change in the program or a grant then we try to keep the whole team well informed about what’s going on. And it’s one of the programs that we consider a cornerstone program of the work that we do and so it’s one of the things we’re most proud of and it’s and essential part of managing markets. And its also an essential part of the fundraising we do and the analysis we do and the data entry that we do and so it touches a lot of different people and areas of work I guess.

Interviewer: Yea, for sure. What have you found that’s something that’s really useful to know in implementing these programs? If you had a new market manager and you like wanted to pass on one core nugget of wisdom to them about implementing a program like produce plus or matching what would you say to them?

Respondent: That’s a good question. That’s hard, I’m not sure if I have a great answer to that.

Interviewer: That’s okay

Respondent: I mean we try to train our market managers to have sort of a social justice lens around the work we do and make sure that markets are really inclusive and welcoming spaces and you know make sure that it’s not just a place of privilege and a predominately white space and a predominately you know wealthy shopper space. I think farmer’s markets get a bad rap, and not entirely unfairly, for being expensive and being elitist and all of this. And we really want to be the opposite of that we want to not just for those populations, which to be fair you know float the 9 and ½ million dollars worth of business we do at all of our markets, but we want them to be welcoming also to the members of the community who are trying to gain access. So I try to help keep that front of mind, both for my market managers and for the senior staff as well.

Interviewer: Yea, okay, cool. And if you had like a specific challenge that you faced with the program or a barrier that even three years back you ran up against in your relationships around these programs, what would that be for you guys?

Respondent: I mean fundraising is the endless struggle with incentive programs, and I mean I think it’s like too much of a good thing in some ways. The program is so well established, so well used and there are so many of them throughout the DC are proliferating now. So we’re all competing for a pot of money that is not really growing, and I think it’s something that four or five years ago was sexier than it is now. And now it’s like, well we’ve heard that before, what else are you doing, what’s new? And that is like a common thing across a lot of nonprofit programs, maintaining a stream of funding that’s going to be sustainable over time. And I think some funders look at this and say “you’re literally just giving money away” and we cant really tie it to health outcomes because we don’t have anywhere near the resources it would take to do that. Um but you know I think some of the dollars are getting diverted to places that do have the resources or do tie that in. Like the Fruit and Vegetable prescription program for example, which is wonderful. But… it does get increasingly hard to bring in the money we need to make the program work and to be able to make sure it’s consistently offered and reliable for them.

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: And you know unfortunately, we’ve recently had to temporarily suspend the program in the winter at our Dupont market. It’s the first time we’ve ever had to do that and that it is really hard. The good and bad thing is that I think…customers who live with really limited resources are used to that, they’re accustomed to that. Programs running out, or programs being temporary, or assistant services being unreliable. And we don’t want to be unreliable for them. But that’s the reality of living on the edge of poverty. It really hurts us to do that. Luckily our customers have responded really well to it, they really get it, they understand. We ran out of money and they know what that’s like, to run out of money.

Interviewer: Yea. Um I guess to talk more about your relationships with some of these customers. Because it sounds like you know some of them, or they’re regulars, or yea you know they come every week… so what do relationships with those customers look like for you? What is a typical interaction? Um yea, how does that look.

Respondent: Yea we do have a lot of customers who come every week, we also have a lot of customers that are new every week and we have people come up constantly and say, “oh I didn’t know this existed.” And that’s one of my favorite things to tell as customer like hey, yea, not only can you spend your EBT we’re going to double it for you. Which, that’s really exciting to tell somebody for the first time. But yea, we do have a lot of repeat customers, I mean we don’t actually end up spending a lot of time with them because they come up to the booth and they get their tokens and they say thank you and go shopping and we don’t see them again. But you know we know that – we’ve managed to get some feedback and testimony from customers over the years and people have told us that they rely on it, and people have told us that it really makes a difference in their lives and in their health and that their families rely on it. So that’s always really nice to hear

Interviewer: Yea, and even if it’s like an anecdote or like, I don’t need a hard number, but can you think of a specific experience of you getting that feedback? Is there like a particular memory that really sticks out to you of someone saying, like hey this really yea impacted me in this way?

Respondent: I don’t know if I have one off of the top of my head but if I remember one I will send you that

Interviewer: And then I guess on the other side I want to explore a little bit like how these programs affect the farmers and producers that come, because they’re the ones accepting the benefit too. So there’s still like an administrative side to that absolutely. So I guess yea what are typical interactions that surround this incentive in your relationships with those produces.

Respondent: Yea, it varies widely. While is probably also due to the fact that cast of characters that sell at farmer’s markets also varies widely. And so there’s always gonna be, ya know, grumpy curmudgeonly farmers who consider this like a pain in the neck. But most of them do recognize at the end of the day that it makes them more money. And I do think that most of our farmers do want their food to be accessible and to broaden their customer base as well. So um I mean the numbers that I’ve recently ran show that for every dollar that we spend on matching dollars, our farmers and producer end up making 1.90. So it really, almost the whole two dollars ends up coming back, there’s a certain amount of token attrition but eventually, like, that money really does make and impact for our farmers and producers. And in a couple of ways, not just because it’s more money but because it brings people to the market. It’s called an incentive program for a reason, it’s bringing customers who otherwise couldn’t afford to shop at the farmer’s market to bring their dollars to the market. Um and I think nationally less than 1% of all SNAP is spent at farmer’s markets, it’s mostly spent at Walmart’s and Big Bucks stores and grocery chains like that. And we really want to drive as many of those dollars as we can to local farmers and to the local food economy. Um so we’re a.} bringing that money in in the first place with the incentive, and then even more by matching it. So I think in general our farmers they can be grumpy to work with sometimes. There’s so many rules, there’s so many different things. And I think one of the things that makes them grumpy is that it’s not cash, and they have to collect a wooden token and give it back to us and then we have write them a receipt and then we go put it in the system and then they get reimbursed like a month later. So it’s not like super instant gratification for them. And farmer’s don’t have a ton of money either, they often live just on the edge of poverty which is the irony of it. Um even though people complain that their prices are too high it’s literally because they cant pay their bills and that’s what it costs to produce real food.

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: I think the vast majority of them are really appreciative of it. The fact that we’re able to…increase the amount of dollars flowing through the market and increase the customer base.

Interviewer: Yea. And I guess do you have, kind of like how I asked if you had customer using the program, do you have an experience or a memory that sticks out to you of a farmer interacting with you around this program.

Respondent: Well…

Interviewer: And it can be a grumpy farmer right, like that’s the reality like that’s okay. I am not here just to listen to the good things that happen with the program I know that’s not how it works.

Respondent: Right I mean, I would say that that’s not a super common experience that we have. The grumpy ones, but. I guess one thing that happened recently, that because we had to do the suspension of the program at Dupont and because we were facing this fundraising shortfall we did a call out to a bunch of our producers right before the all in service DC weekend this past weekend and we had a pretty good response rate. We, I mean, we asked people who have stores specifically… and you know one of our producers Um so that was a nice thing.

Interviewer: I’m gonna cry, probably [both laugh]. I’m just really happy to hear that that work is happening and that people are receptive to it and that individual experiences with people are so powerful. And that’s what I want out of this, is to be able to share that with someone who don’t get to site down with you and hear those experiences. So yea super important. And then I guess you kind of spoke a little bit about the challenge for farmers – its that delayed, that delayed payment. Its extremely hard. Is there is a similar challenge of sorts for customers using the program?

Respondent: You know I haven’t heard that from people, I think occasionally people find the token system confusing. I think that’s the crux of what can frustrate both customers and farmers. That because we’re accepting EBT on the farmer’s behalf um and we’re issuing that, like there is no other way than for us to do the token system, and so that’s the way we do it but it’s a little bit cumbersome for people because then they’re carrying around all these tokens and it doesn’t necessarily feel like “real money” and you know, there’s no change given for them and so if something is a dollar forty than the farmer has to make the decision if they’re gonna like round it down or not give somebody change which is really hard for people who cant afford to not have change. Which is true for both the farmer and the customer oftentimes right?

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: Um. And You know, it’s just a slightly awkward and cumbersome system and it seems like it’s not technologically advanced and it’s not super up to speed and streamlined for both customers and farmers but we’re just not there yet. Um.

Interviewer: Do you have an idea of like, in the ideal world, what does that look like? For that like streamlined process? You know if you had unlimited funding to have technology or to have the infrastructure like, what resources would be like most helpful and important for you to have.

Respondent: Hm. I’m sort of imagining technology that doesn’t exist yet, or maybe it does and I’m not aware of it, but I think it would be – I only have a vague notion of this but – it would be nice if there was some digital card reader or something that every farmer had that we could provide the matching dollars electronically to our customers. Then they could spend it electronically with farmers, and then it’s instant for everybody. There’s no carrying around of wooden nickles and there’s not writing recipets and reimbursing people later. And that would be really ideal. I mean I don’t think we can do that as a credit card system, and you know we would have to create a new card and it would have to be secure and um…it still wouldn’t be perfect because they would have both the EBT card and the WIC checks or, I don’t know, it would be great if we could make it electronic somehow.

Interviewer: And is there, I’m not sure I’m really asking, with Produce Plus I know they have the cards but they have vouchers too, right?

Respondent: Right

Interviewer: So I, when I started volunteering at market in the Fall the program had essentially ended so I didn’t get to really interact with it very much. So I didn’t see what that looked like. I know people would come later with like the physical card.

Respondent: Yea the card was just a membership card

Interviewer: Okay

Respondent: Because you had to register to accept produce plus

Interviewer: Okay

Respondent: Um and in years past before those membership cards existed you had to take everyone’s detailed information every time and write it in a paper ledger. So they created a membership card so that when people came to the market for the first time they entered all their information, it registered the data, and they were issued a card. And then they just bring back the card next time so that we’re getting the data every time and we know people aren’t getting more checks than they’re allowed to get and we know how many times somebody comes to or how many markets they visit over the course of the season. So that’s the data that Produce Plus tries to collect but there’s no value on the cards like it’s just a membership card at the gym or something.

Interviewer: Okay, so it’s kinda the same thing, like it’s two thing you have to carry [laughs].

Respondent: Right. Yup, yup. And then the checks system for produce plus is checks so its basically ancient technology at this point but they just we’re not there yet with advancing that either. And you know anything we advance technology on would require advancing the farmer’s technology on and that has always been a sticking point for farmers. Farmers are generally not the most technologically advanced people on the planet. And it’s expensive to advance technology. So it’s only been in the past few years that the majority of our farmers and producers now accept credit cards on their own, which is part of the reason we eliminated the credit card tokens at market. Because basically we don’t need them any more, so.

Interviewer: Yea

Respondent: So

Interviewer: Oh good.

Respondent: Yea anything where we technologically advance, you’re gotta give the farmers a little bit more time to get there. And then you know if they’re already bringing a credit card reader, and they’re already bringing a scale, they’re already bringing a cash box, there’s only so many things you can ask of them. And they already work harder than all of the rest of us put together, so we try not to put too much of the burden on the farmers when we can help it.

Interviewer: Yea. Okay, well that’s really all I wanted to hear about so thank for you for answering all of that.

Respondent: Absolutely

Interviewer: Is there just anything else important about the program or your interactions with people specifically around the program that you think would be important to share.

Respondent: I don’t know, I think what we really want and have not been able to achieve yet is to get the rest of our customers to understand food access and to have some buy in into that. Um. And it used to be sort of a talking point with customers based on the fact that if anyone needed to get credit card customers for us we would tell them “the $2 fee you get charged goes to matching dollars” and then we could have the opportunity to explain that to them and most of the customers were happy to hear that and to contribute to it. But now that we don’t have that we don’t have the opportunity to engage customers on that. Um. And we’re still really struggling to message to our customers than we do more than just farmers markets, that we’re not a store, and we’re not a business, that we do all of this other work and then that’s one of the reasons that shopping at our markets is important because you’re supporting food access work and you’re supporting farmers support work, and you’re supporting education work that we do outside of the markets or beyond the markets. And just messaging that to customers is really hard because you know, they’re there to shop and a lot of the time they don’t come up to the info table to talk to the market managers and I don’t blame them. They just want to get in and get out and buy their groceries and go home. Which is totally understandable but I think trying to make our markets more community oriented spaces and to get customers more involved in the work that we do outside of markets besides just bring farmers into the city to sell vegetables is something that we’re really working on. And we really want our customers to be invested in the fact that we do have food access work that we’re doing and to contribute to that however they can. So.

Interviewer: Yea. Yea. Absolutely. Well thank you.

Respondent: Of course

Interviewer: So if I have any like clarifying questions when I’m reading back through this if I shoot you an email?

Respondent: Yea, just email me, that’s totally fine

Interviewer: Cool.