The Eugene Saturday Market and Lane County Farmers Market have had to limit their capacities throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. While reducing in-person shopping has hurt some vendors, online sales and a heightened interest in local shopping have allowed others to flourish.
Vanessa Roy, the marketing manager for the Eugene Saturday Market, said the market was closed from April to June in 2020. It now only has half as many booths as it did before the pandemic due to capacity limits and has lost revenue as a result, she said.
People must wear masks in accordance with state mandates. The Saturday Market does not have live music, busking or petitioning, Roy said. It returned to full capacity by the end of June but was then reduced to half capacity on Aug. 28 due to safety concerns about the Delta variant, she said.
Some vendors said capacity limits and closures have hurt their businesses. “It’s not been great,” Jessica Blanchette, who sells kitchen woodwork at the Saturday Market, said. “It mostly just has to do with consumer confidence and how many people are out here.”
Despite a lack of in-person shopping, other vendors have found success by selling their goods online in addition to at the Saturday Market.
Angela Lees sells jewelry both online and at the market. Her business has been better than ever, she said. “At the beginning of the pandemic, online was just insane — so good,” she said.
Bret Pendlebury, who sells his artwork at the Saturday Market, said his sales went up during the pandemic because of his online store. “I was worried because I’m not an essential worker,” he said. “But people are still buying stuff, and I think more people are buying stuff locally too.”
Roy said she has also seen a renewed interest in shopping locally since the start of the pandemic. “Eugene is a community that likes to support local business,” she said. “A lot of our local businesses have been experiencing a lot of love, and they’re busy. That’s a beautiful thing in this community.”
Local shoppers of the Saturday Market reached out to Roy to see how they could support high-risk vendors who could not sell in person, she said. The market started a Facebook Marketplace with almost 3,000 people to support vendors.
Roy said the Saturday Market is a staple of the community and has served as a bit of normalcy throughout the turmoil of the pandemic. It will return to full capacity on Sept. 25, she said.
The Lane County Farmers Market holds its Saturday market just a few blocks away from the Eugene Saturday Market. The markets remained open throughout the pandemic because the mandates classified them as grocery stores, Office and Communications Manager Meghan Verberkmoes said.
Although the Lane County Farmers Market had to limit the number of booths in the beginning, Verberkmoes said the pandemic had more of a cultural impact than a financial one.
Staff spaced booths ten feet apart and created specific flows of traffic around the booths to enforce social distancing, Verberkmoes said.
“The result of all that was it turned the market into strictly a grocery shopping trip as opposed to a social, community event that a lot of people were accustomed to it being,” Verberkmoes said. “Lots of people come to the market not just to get food, but to hang out, visit with friends and talk with people. We had to eliminate all that type of behavior.”
Verberkmoes said interest in locally produced food and products has grown during the pandemic. However, some vendors said they have had less business since the Delta variant appeared.
Michael Thal and his family rely on farmers markets to sell flower bouquets. He said business has been slower than usual due to fear over the Delta variant. “It’s off and on. It picks up and it goes down,” he said. “It just depends on whether or not people come out.”
Some vendors turned to online methods to sell their goods. Verberkmoes said selling locally grown food online is tricky because the food has a short shelf life.
Vendors selling online created locations for pick up — such as local restaurants, stores and farms — and delivery of their goods, Verberkmoes said. “It was kind of neat to see some things that came out of it,” Verberkmoes said. “We actually had one vendor develop a whole new business.”
Moondog’s Farm created the website Lane County Bounty, where customers can order locally grown food from its farm as well as other small farms in the area, Verberkmoes said.
Decks Family Farm also created an online store that allows customers to order goods from the farm for pick up. “We have had a lot of orders,” Kelly Snyder, a worker for the farm, said. “There’s an increase of people getting them that way.”
Verberkmoes said she hopes the interest in local food during the pandemic will continue as the Lane County Farmers Market develops a new site in downtown Eugene. Opening in winter or spring of 2022, the new site will allow more vendors and increased membership, Verberkmoes said.
“There’s so much good food being produced in the area, and I think people caught on to it,” Verberkmoes said. “It feels like locally produced food is becoming more and more like the norm for what people want to eat here.”
