Once upon a time in a similar, large vendor market in Florida that I used to attend regularly, we had a guy that we referred to as “the tip guy.” The market hired him for an hourly wage, allowed him to use the market hand cart and he was there to help the vendors with anything from set up to break down and everything in between, he would watch your booth for a bathroom break or go get you food if needed. He was great and he did quite well because we all tipped him for these services. I have often thought we need a “tip guy (or girl).” And we did know his name, he was popular.
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I think that’s a great idea!
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I Luv it! That would be an awesome asset for me, for of the above, because I vend by myself. I’m all for it! You got my Vote…Yes!
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This sounds a lot like the “Booth Angels” idea I presented a couple years ago, although my idea was just to “hire” a couple of the vendors’ (older) kids and see if they’d work for tips. I think for this to work well, we would ideally want to hire enough folks to assign them each a row they’d be in charge of. They could help folks with set up, break down, bathroom breaks, run grab food, etc. Having multiples and assigning them a row would allow them to develop good working relationships with the regular vendors in that row and spread out the workload a bit, since I think one person would get a little overwhelmed given our market size.
At any rate, I’m a major supporter of this idea. If enough vendors were for the idea, I believe crowdfunding the folks would be a breeze, although I realize they’d almost certainly have to be officially hired by the market from a liability standpoint, but I’d be more than happy to kick in a some bucks each market to defray the costs of the extra employee(s) if the market themselves weren’t willing to spring for the 100% of the extra paycheck. A couple extra bucks would TOTALLY be worth the ability to go pee when I needed to, or have someone just run grab me a water, not to mention I’d also tip them for the convenience of not having to try to wait for a lull in booth traffic.
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