New Applicant Orientation

So you want to join the Downtown Waterville Farmers’ Market?

We are a membership-based organization of farmers and artisan food producers that hosts weekly farmers markets year round except during the Thanksgiving and late December holiday season when the market is closed. Market from December through April are held indoors. Membership is open to any Maine farm or food producer who meets the requirements laid out in our rules and bylaws and who is approved/accepted by the membership of the market at our annual New Applicants Meeting in March.

How do I apply?

Download these three important documents from the Market Documents page :

1. 1. 1. Market By-Laws (tells how market organization is structured.)
      2. Market Rules (tells what the day-to-day rules are for selling at market.)
      3. Application for Membership (download, print, fill in, and return to us.)

Please review our By-Laws and thoroughly read our Market Rules.
Fill out and return an application for membership before the deadline.
You MUST include copies of any licenses or permits which are required by state or federal law, including insurance. Emailing a legible photo of your licenses and permits to the application person works just fine.
If you don’t have this year’s licenses yet, send a copy of last year’s licenses for now and a copy of this year’s when you get them.
Applicants wishing to use the word “Organic” to describe their products at market must be certified Organic and must include a copy of their organic certification with their application.
Mail the application to the address on the application.
After we receive your application, we will contact you and invite you to our annual membership meeting in March. Your attendance at this meeting is required in order to be considered for market membership.
At the membership meeting, you will have a chance to introduce yourself and talk about your business and the passion you have for producing whatever delicious foods you produce. After you do so, you will be excused and the membership will discuss your application before voting on whether to accept you as a member of the market. We will contact you later that day—or the next day at the very latest—to let you know how it went.

A few important points and tips:

Many applicants bring samples or photos of their product(s) and pictures of their farm or business to the interview. It helps us get a taste and impression of you and your business.
Visit the market at least once to help yourself get a feel for the market and whether your product is a good fit for the market.
Our market “welcoming committee” will visit the farms and businesses of all new members to welcome you to the market and ensure that you’re producing all of the items you’re selling at market. After this first visit, all members of the market are visited every few years on a rotating basis.
As spelled out in our rules, after being accepted all new members are provisional for at least their first year. This means they can attend market and all meetings, but don’t yet have voting privileges. All provisional members are reconsidered for full membership every year at the Annual Meeting.
If you are accepted at the New Applicant Meeting, you will need to contact our webmaster with a brief “blurb” suitable for our printed brochure and—if you’d like—a longer description for our website.

Advice and Perspective…

… for new market applicants

Why are you joining a market?

Is hauling your wares to a farmers’ market going to be your only income source? Is the Market a stepping stone to introduce the public to your farm’s location or your CSA? Its visibility to restaurants and other potential wholesale accounts? A way to advertise your u-pick or farm stand? Will farmers’ markets become your major source of income into the indefinite future?

Not everyone is good at selling at a farmers’ market.

Farmers often think they are “eliminating the middleman” by attending a farmers’ market. This is not true. Instead, they are becoming the middleman, needing to adopt all those responsibilities that come between production and retail sale. Beautifully grown farm produce alone will not always make the sale (although it certainly helps!). An attentive, friendly and helpful manner while at market is every bit as important as product quality. And you will have to pull this off regardless of whether it’s sweltering or freezing, sunny or raining, whether your cat just died, or you just had to fire a farm employee, or your last customer was incredibly rude. You also have to re-create your eye-catching display every time you set up. Some folks grow great produce, but have difficulty with all those retailing skills that bring success at market.

What is my part in a farmers’ market?

A farmers’ market is not itself a business, but rather an association of separate small and micro businesses co-operating at a common retail location. Market members work together to provide exposure, product development, marketing, and income for their businesses. They also provide non-economic services: a space for communities to gather, support each other and educate the shoppers about all the local foods available to them. For the towns they operate in, markets provide a customer draw, an anchor for their retail zones, and an awareness for their town centers. For market members, markets are a place to learn and to gain exposure so that they can become independent, successful enterprises that have become connected with their communities.

New Vendors.

We love to bring new vendors into the market. Shoppers enjoy finding new items, meeting new faces, and truly enjoy being part of building the success of a small business. New vendors can contribute fresh inspiration to a market. However, it is unreasonable for new applicants to expect to be automatically handed the customer base, the free advertising, the location, and the working relationships with town and local businesses that have been developed by a long standing, prosperous market. These things took years of dedicated hard work by market members volunteering their time away from their own businesses to establish this market. Joining a Farmer’s Market is by no means an entitlement!

Many hands make light work.

Each Market has a responsibility to both the town they serve and the vendors who make up the market to assure that their site is a well rounded, pleasant, exciting, clean, friendly, and compassionate place. As a vendor in a market, you are part of an association of members who are cooperating to create a larger and more varied retail experience than any of us could do alone. You should not expect to simply show up, make money, and leave. The market is a living thing and you are not only responsible for your own business’s success, but for the market’s success as well! The better the market does, the better we all do. There is work involved in making the market happen, and this should not entirely fall on a few people. It has been demonstrated time and again that markets whose members are involved in helping the market to function well are the most successful markets for their members.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Many market members also use other marketing outlets, such as stores, restaurants, buying clubs and wholesalers—along with their participation in one or more markets. It is also important for new vendors to realize that their display, marketing, customer service, and product might be well served by joining 2 or 3 smaller markets their first few years to “get the kinks out” of their market setup. It’s a process—give yourself time to experiment. Markets are a safe zone to learn in.

You might not be accepted into the market.

Don’t fret, it happens to us all, and often says more about the market’s own current needs than it does about your value as a vendor. Some markets, especially newly forming ones, are looking for as many new members as they can find. Smaller markets, ironically, are often easier to get into than larger markets. Other, usually well established markets, are careful to accept only those new applicants whom the existing members believe will help balance the offerings at the market. Furthermore, the needs of every market change from year to year, so a market that doesn’t accept you one year may be looking for what you have to offer the following year. So don’t be afraid to re-apply next year.

What does your future hold?

Sometimes members who have left markets over the years are “graduates”, meaning that they have established wholesale, CSA, even mail-order businesses, or developed their own customer base and no longer need to go to a farmers’ market. We’re sad to see them go, but very proud that we were part of their success! Others have discovered that, for one reason or another, their sales were not what they had expected, and were able to back out without incurring the huge debts of a brick and mortar obligation. The market was a great venue to let them try out their dream. They too, graduated.