We had really good feedback from the Essentials Markets last weekend. All of the media was onsite, the City paid us a visit and the Hamilton County Health Department spent a couple of hours with us – and were very impressed with our approach and the care/attention which our vendors and customers took during the event. It was a big deal, and we made it through! Congrats, and thanks for making it a good experience.
Sales were good - $38,938 total, 671/vendor avg. Given the condensed format, this was right where we thought it would be (Collegedale Essentials has been tracking similar vendor averages). We need to bring the larger format back online before the market will truly be healthy again, but it was a solid start.
Total Sales YTD: $148,402; PYTD: $1,024,944 – so we are down 86% for the year, thus far. That’s painful for everyone, but we are back in the groove and it feels as though the pace will start to quicken from here.
The Collegedale Freedom Festival has been confirmed by the City for July 2, and registration for food trucks/market booths will open next week. We are programming two stages of music again, and I expect a large crowd will attend. This should be a significant event for our food trucks in particular, who are long overdue for some good news.
We also have consent to host two concessions partners in Collegedale (registration is currently online), and continue to discuss the reintroduction of Food Trucks to the Chattanooga Market with various officials. Progress is being made, I believe, and I hope to have limited-but-good news soon. Fingers crossed.
My revised timeline is a continuance of reopening through June (including River Markets), with some expansion in July and hopefully a broader return towards normalcy in the Fall. I do not believe we will be completely back to our regular self in 2020 – a vaccine needs to be widely available before life will really settle down, but we’re making some progress. And Holiday Market is looking more promising every day; we’re going to start preparing that enrollment process for July, as is our annual tradition.