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

Interviewer: Okay, um so I guess… well we can start with this, do you want to talk about how you got into market and why you decided this was something you wanted to do. Yea, just for some background information.

Respondent: Yea. Absolutely. So I got a bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking at Syracuse and I worked at a small.. tiny co-op at the tiny. Syracuse Real Food Co-op. It was like an old house. So at that time I was also becoming a vegetarian and also I remember I like applied to that position the first time and really did not have fully formed thoughts to answer the manager at the time who was interviewing me’s questions. Like what distinguishes work done there versus…

Interviewer: A grocery store or?

Respondent: A regular grocery store. So that really challenged me to go back and have, just more fully formulated thoughts. And so I worked there and, I worked there for two years and then graduated… did a couple artist residencies around the country, worked at a restaurant slash catering slash marketplace in North Carolina and learned fast paced food service. And then I moved here and started working at Each Peace, for about two and a half years, one and half of which I was the General Manager. And so there I got to really dive in to, being at the point between producer and consumer and you know even on a small scale um being that we are neighborhood serving focused, you know, how could my position there help people make better choices by offering a better selection and kind of just doing research for the customers. Because um you know, how can people make better choices if they don’t have access to that? Just making it easier for people to make better choices. So, you know, um I built several partnerships sourcing fair change bananas and avocados from Equa-Exchange and [pause for ambulance sirens].

Interviewer: Gotta love the city.

Respondent: Yea, so I did fair trade sourcing, and did research on what our organic grass-fed meat options would be because um up until that point we kind of had pretty um general or kind of murky understandings of our meat supplier and um I just wanted us to take a firmer grassroots stance on that because people can, we, here in Ward 1 people, we aren’t a food desert. Sorry this is a little more elaborate than maybe you’re looking for.

Interviewer: No. No, it’s good background. I’m interested.

Respondent: Um, you know we’re not a food desert so people can go to lots – there’s a Safeway, Giant, a Trader Jones, whatever – to get standard, conventional, you know products so I thought of us as being a way to offer a higher quality and a local, focusing locally. So um, in the end it wasn’t my business and so they were focused more on being a staple small business so uh that just really kind of came to me having, wanting to be in a more dynamic, progressive enivorment and um, also serve people that really need these resources. Um. Where, we we’re at a very affluent place in this area. Yea, and my old co-worker there Janet, Janet Hoffman, had worked at Arcadia and loved it. I read an article about Juju’s work there and just was like super inspired to hear about that work, and then I saw that they were hiring and went for it and um, yea, um Jeremy met with me. It was a great conversation. He hired me and last season it was like, this is the work I want to be doing. There were many vendors, like Tuscorara Organic Co-operative, I worked with them at Each Peach and I work with them at Arcadia. So, um, you know it’s outstanding to continue those partnerships and see them have so much more of an impact, have them reaching a new customer base, and allowing them to do that. Where they don’t have to take on that risk, we’re able to be the aggregator. And. So.

Interviewer: Great. Super interesting as someone coming into this space. It’s interesting to hear people’s lived experience and how they kind of moved through um, yea through careers and through the food world.

Respondent: Mhm.

Interviewer: But I do want to focus on the incentive programs you work with now. I guess we can kind of start by talking about how it kind of looks at market distributing incentives. So, Arcadia does bonus bucks?

Respondent: Mhm.

Interviewer: And Produce Plus, right?

Respondent: Right.

Interviewer: And are there other incentives or it just those two?

Respondent: Yea just matching programs.

Interviewer: So how does the exchange, or is it less of an exchange and more of a conversation. Talking about relationships, how does the transactional piece look at market?

Respondent: Yea, so they’re handled separately. You know, we have distribution of produce plus on sight, which is it’s own beast. And then when we’re actually giving out the vouchers or community partners are giving out the vouchers and then we’re accepting them as payment. So that’s fairly straightforward as far as, once the clarity of eligibility, of signing up and getting your vouchers spending them is very simple. Just fruits and vegetables.

Interviewer: Yea.

Respondent: the only things that can be purchased for produce plus, and then our app – the farmer’s register designed by Perigee – is so awesome. Because it, you know, it addresses something that would be a real barrier for people to do certainly by hand. Which is how most farmers and vendors at markets still process payments. Um. Uh. And that’s why at a lot of markets they have tokens, which they can handle the matching up front for customers and then they’re able to use that with participating vendors. So there’s kind of more steps involved at other markets where they do the token process. But for us, people can just shop, they know their increased buying power through our matching program so they can shop keeping that in mind. Like this is $3.00 a pound but it’s really $1.50. Or I can get twice as much, so we just kind of engage with people up front when they come start to shop or just to support participating because they might not be aware. Something that especially with, when we’re working with seniors, I mean it’s an outrageous fact that seniors only get $15 a month in SNAP benefits. It’s like a joke. So I at least you know bring to the table that that can be $32 at our market, so that’s at least a dramatic change there or something. It’s something.

Interviewer: Yea, it’s more right. Yea, what does that look like when you’re talking to customers? There are so many things that you have to do at market, right, and how do you I guess work with Jeremy or work with other volunteers? And especially, how do you have the conversation itself with customers? What do those dynamics look like at market?

Respondent: Yea! There’s always up front questions, you know, “have you shopped here before,” you know certainly as the season went on there were so many people I knew are with us and I’m looking forward to working again with them this year but um yea just asking, “have you shopped here before,” “do you receive any benefits?” And you know, always wanting to be acute to um. People, there’s there’s no identity of a SNAP recipient. So anybody can or…we never know when someone comes to market what their spending dollar is so. We kind of just have an approach of giving the whole schbeil so we don’t have to call someone out and be like, “do you get WIC? Or do you… you know?” But if someone pulls out their vouchers we’ll say, oh okay, let me tell you, “not only can you use your WIC Farmers Market vouchers but you can use your CVC vouchers for eggs.” Or, you know, just trying to give them all of the information so they can apply that to their purchasing. Yea, um. Uh. Yea always talking up about getting meat and eggs as well for SNAP customers, because that’s another incredible service we offer through certified organic, local, grass-fed meat.

Interviewer: Yea.

Respondent: And so it’s incredible prices that we have as a base but then it’s half the price with SNAP, so people can really stock up. It’s a huge seller and it’s something that we’re excited to expand this yea.

Interviewer: And I guess that’s what It looks like on the customer end, what does that look like on the end of labor? The end of you and Jeremy and the intern and any volunteer that’s with you for the day. Does one person interact with customers, is everyone kind of playing that role?

Respondent: Yea, we usually have three people at the market. One of us either like the operator, manager, Jeremy and two staff members. We didn’t really have many volutneers..we didn’t kind of have a strong volunteer program this year. We had people that would kind of trickle in from other programs. We try to have one person on register. One person restocking and running. And then, either like another person on the register or a floater to kind of talk to people. WE all pretty much talk to everyone about, any questions that come up or, we just. It’s a tetris-running circus. [ laughs] It’s very fluid to the needs of the market in the summer, there’s really busy times and quitter times and people who are just passing by and curious about what we’re doing. So we kind of are in-tuned to what each other is doing and help in those ways.

Interviewer: And I guess the term floater I know from food service and how it’s used in that space, but I’m curious what that means for Arcadia’s Mobile Market? What do interactions in that role with each other and customers look like?

Respondent: Yea we store…we put out, especially in the heat of the summer, put out just enough of our selection and kind of keep things. We’re kind of a unique structure where we have up to four markets a day, two on each of our vehicles, and are really focused on trying to reduce waste and just have the right amount to carry us through a few days of market. We try to preserve things, so that means obviously keeping things in the coolers, obviously the meats in the freezers, eggs in the coolers, so there’s kind of always someone that’s right there near the entrance to our truck where we have signs that explain our matching programs, we have a list of our meat and egg selection and the full price of cash or debit and half price with SNAP. So that’s just giving people ideas of how much each item actually costs. Like if it’s a pound and half of whatever. Helping people see what produce looks like. The floater really enables us to, that person kind of is able to offer an advanced level of customer care. Where we’re just trying to execute and get people to have a pleasant expedited experience at the register, the floater is a person who can kind of dive more deeply into you know, “well I make beef short ribs in a crock pot and it’s super easy.” Or just able to dive a little deeper.

Interviewer: Cool. Awesome. And I’ll ask this on both ends, but can you talk a little bit about if you have a specific experience that you had with a customer or a specific interaction that was meaningful to you that sticks out around an incentive program? So it can be receiving produce plus, or doing matching, or just talking to someone in line. Whatever you most remember.

Respondent: I should also bring up that there is another incentive program called FVRx. And so that…um, some of those, some of the FVRx patients have, those were more dramatic experiences. For example this is a mother that participated at the Community of Hope location, and she has 11 children. Which is like, blows my mind. I was like, “how do you do that?” And she was like, “I run them, they don’t run me.” And I was like, “you are amazing.” And so yea, I don’t know, about every other week – because they will give you two weeks worth of checks at a time – so like her and several of her kids would come and run around and it was a whole event of shopping and you know just needing a lot of you know, buying all of our kale, and as many watermelons as they could fit in the car with all fo them that were there. So that was always a really amazing amazing turn out and experience. And they were just so fun and lovely. But there are so many. I mean, um, there’s a – a couple of customers that I always go back to like Debbie Dykes, who is a grandmother who is SNAP recipient and participated in Produce Plus and she shopped at several of our markets in Ward 8.. And she had a car so she was able to get around a bit more but she really was focused on learning how to can this past season, so we really would brain-storm together about that. I tried tomato sauce this one way, roasting them and then blending them, and she would try another way. Or you know, she and her grandson made pickles together and so it was a generational thing. So there’s always… you never stop learning, there’s always an opportunity to learn something new. And its obviously incredibly powerful to be able to buy this amazing fresh food and be able to preserve it and transform it in ways that you only usually experience with store bought, shelf stable products. But there are so many.

Interviewer: Incredible. Yea, I know. I love to hear a good story, so thank you. And then, so I guess it doesn’t look quite the same as having vendors at market for the Mobile Market but can you talk a little bit about like your relationship with producers like the partners where you get the meat or the eggs? How do you communicate, what do those interactions look like? I know that doesn’t actually occur. Well I guess you can tell me how that works in your market space. [laughs] I need to not insert my knowledge of Arcadia’s market here, I need to hear from you how the market works with vendors.

Respondent: Yea but you know how it works.

Interviewer: But tell me about that piece.

Respondent: Okay. Yea. So Jeremy was fully in charge of our relationships with farmers and producers this past year. Of course with our farmer Katherine we were a bit more involved. What was really fun was, Alicia and myself as the mobile market operators we would make notes of, “we need so much more red cabbage for congress heights,” or “we need a lot more, someone wants a whole case of concord grapes next week at this market.” So that was, it was really fun to you know. Like at a grocery store it’s more generic, you’re just trying to meet a general demand of filling up a space and making it look good and um, just having it being inticing for anyone who stops in, but at our markets – especially because we’re the only vendor that’s present – we’re able to be incredibly dynamic. So if we realize one week, “okay there’s so many parsnips available from our farmers right now but they are not moving,” like we don’t have to carry them because we want to give people what they want. And we want, it’s kind of choosing your battles and which to focus on. There’s always, that being said, we want to encourage exploration and creativity and exposure and education so um… we definitely keep a full selection just to expose people to more things, but yea as far as the supplier relationship we just submit weekly or twice a week orders and just see what’s available. You know, some of the local food companies we work with like Local Food Co-op and tuscorara are aggregators themselves or co-ops so they’re also working from a group of suppliers. So, in one awesome way that means there is a lot more stability usually. They have multiple people that are growing the same thing, and we’re able to offer stability that way but we [pause]… yea.

Interviewer: I’m wondering, like the ability to say, “at congress heights we need more cabbage,” and at another stop, “we don’t want parsnips,” how that looks in your relationship with the farmers. So if Farmer Katherine has like a ton of parsnips, what do you… how does that look? How does the ability to be dynamic look there?

Respondent: Yea, yea, yea. Yes, so I guess to back up. That’s another important angle. The great thing is with the Arcadia farms, and the Banium farm, we’re able to plan in advance and review the previous market season and see you know, “what could we be growing a lot more of? Or what did we buy from other suppliers last year that was a lot more expensive that we could be more autonomous about and also be more cost effective? So you know Katherine isn’t growing parsnips, for example, she’s really….Katherine supplies most of our kale and collards and most of our salad greens, so things that are usually a lot more expensive on the market. So things like that, like salad greens, and herbs. Things that we will not take on that risk financially because we can grow it ourselves and we harvest it at the time that we need it. Like Katherine would deliver our harvest twice a week for us. We could tell her that morning or something, “slow down on spinach, we’ll take the rest on Thursday.” At the same time then, for Tuscorora and of the other suppliers – for the aggregators at least – they are stable so they are great partners but they don’t need our, you know, us buying garlic necessarily. They, they’re more stable on their own. Ontop of that they also, like Tuscorara would send out a weekly availability list and their header has, “he have a lot of baby carrots we have to move. So we’re offering case discounts.” They often do like if you buy three or more you get a discount. They also are clear on this end of, we’ll buy extra this week we know those will send. We definitely want to be supportive on all ends.

Interviewer: Okay, and then can you talk about, the either the acceptance of – since you are the ones accepting the incentive itself – how does that work with partners? Is there a relationship around the incentive or not at this case since they aren’t physically present at market or not in this case?

Respondent: Not, not, not for us. So we, you know buy product from producers and then the incentive programs are us paying us back basically. So that’s that relationships.

Interviewer: So there’s a non-existent relationship around..?

Respondent: Yea its basically non-existence. So, you know, we work with – uh – one of the suppliers we work with is Chocolate and Tomatoes and so for that example I don’t know what their incentive program participation is at their own markets but for us at least that means that they don’t have to take the risk of coming to a new area, where they don’t know how stable their support would be, and we can manage that whole end which is a beast in itself. Of us and the incentive programs.

Interviewer: Okay; and can you, likewise like you did with a customer, can you give me an example or story about a conversation with a partner or Katherine? So on the other end.

Respondent: Around like…?

Interviewer: I guess so in this case… I am interested in around the incentives specifically but since that doesn’t exist in this case, I guess just any conversation you have had with producers around them. If you don’t have an example that’s okay.

Respondent: And for sure Jeremy will be able to give more stories because he did most of, he handled that relationship mostly but Mark with Chocolate and Tomatoes – I mean one, similar how we would work, he wants information before the season starts on what things we definitely need a lot more of this year. A lot more broccoli, a lot more sweet potatoes. He’s really tuned in to that. He also is also really committed to giving us affordable prices because he believes in the work that we’re doing. So that’s huge. Because there’s so many different objectives for each small farmer, they just want to make sure that they’re getting a fair price for the incredible work that they do and that’s so challenging when you’re competing with things that – on a superficial level – a lot of customers might seem like, “I can get it for 50 cents at Giant” and we sell it for $2.00 a pound so um. You know, it’s an involved conversation, an ongoing conversation about the distinction there. Yea so for Mark to prioritize as a supplier for us that the price needs to be accessible and in-turn we will also make sure we’re moving a ton of his product and giving it a new outlet. That’s a really awesome relationship.

Interviewer: Cool. Okay, that’s all I’ve got. Do you have anything else you want to share about incentives or relationships around them? Anything you didn’t cover?

Respondent: Yea I mean you know this but we represent 3% of farmer’s market sales and we represent 30% of SNAP purchases in the city. And uh, for WIC you know only 30% of WIC is redeemed each year, as far as farmer’s market nutrition programs go. So yea a big part of what we’re doing is just trying to increase usage and people cant spend their farmer’s market checks if they don’t have access to a farmer’s market. So we’re just always focusing on being easy and accessible and affordable and being welcoming and transparent, you know. Yea. And for me this year I’m really focused on just reaching more people. So much of our success has been through word of mouth and um, uh, we haven’t been able to really dedicate –we’ve just been executing – we haven’t been able to dedicate direct outreach efforts. So I’m just really excited to reach more people this year.

Interviewer: Okay, well thank you.