This picture shows one of the vendor meetings that the Mercer Island market manager would hold most Sunday mornings, fifteen to twenty minutes before the start of the market. I really liked the idea, and it certainly helped to keep us current on what we needed to know, like special promotions, though the logistics were sometimes tricky. (If you look really closely you can see some vendors clutching their cash boxes.)
This Sunday was the last market of the year, and I'm actually kind of sorry to see this one go, although I won't miss the wind, which got a lot worse with the beginning of fall. Like Queen Anne, Mercer Island is an independently run market with a terrific, motivated team of volunteers. I suspect it's no coincidence that both markets stayed strong until the end of the season, rather than petering out like some of the others.
I was skeptical about picking up this market, which just started in August 2008. The manager called me repeatedly last year, telling me how great it was going to be, and how well I would do there. (She doesn't eat dairy, and really wanted to be able to eat my vegan cheese sauce on a weekly basis.) Everyone hypes their own market, so I figured that was what was going on, but then I started hearing from vendors that they just couldn't keep their tables stocked fully enough to meet the demand. So I decided I'd figure out a way to do it, even though it was on Sunday, the same day as Ballard, which is by far my busiest market.
According to everyone involved, this year wasn't nearly as successful as last year, although that seems to have been the case at almost every market. Judy, who runs the Ballard Market, has a theory that every market sucks during its second year. Be that as it may, it was still one of my better markets, and I'll be happy to do it again next year.
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