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The 4-Question Framework for Choosing Any Market or Event | Episode 142

Sep 25
13 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

Listen on Apple Podcasts


In my very first year, I said yes to opening day at a pumpkin patch because I was sure it would be packed. I sat there for nine hours in the September heat with my kids and sold four, maybe five loaves of bread. That day taught me more about events than any market I have ever done, and it is the reason this whole framework exists.


You have probably had a version of this happen to you. An invitation lands in your DMs or your inbox, or someone tags you in a vendor call on Facebook, and it feels like an honor to be asked. So you say yes. Then you bake for two days, load the car at six in the morning, sit somewhere for seven hours, and bring most of it home. That is not a fun day, and heading into the holidays, it can cost you a whole weekend you could have used for pre-orders or a different event entirely!


So today I am sorting every selling opportunity you will ever be invited to into three categories: recurring markets, one-off events, and pop-ups. We are going to spend most of our time on one-offs, because those are the wild cards, the ones that are hit or miss all through the holiday season. But there are events like this all year long, so this framework holds up no matter when you are listening.


Before we get into the categories, one quick note. This episode is about how to choose an event, not how to sell once you are standing there. For the actual booth setup and how to talk to people once you have said yes, go back to Episode 7. And if you want the view from the other side of the table, Episode 58 is my interview with Ashley, a market organizer, on exactly what she looks at when your application comes in.


The four questions that decide almost everything

Every event you will ever be invited to should get run through the same filter, before you say yes to anything.


History. Has this happened before, and how long has it been running?


Reputation. When you ask around, especially other vendors who have sold there, what do people actually say?


Audience. Who is walking through? Are they there to buy food, or are they browsing for something else entirely, like gifts or photo opportunities?


Size. This means foot traffic more than booth count. A market with sixty vendors and no shoppers is worse than a market with twelve vendors and a line.

What changes from category to category is how much weight each question carries, and where you go to get the answer. Let's walk through all three.


Category one: recurring markets

These are your classic farmers markets and vendor markets, the ones that happen on a predictable schedule, weekly, twice a month, or monthly. What puts them in their own category is that people can build a habit around them, and so can you. I sold at the same market on the same weekend for a couple of years, and it was one of the best things I ever did for my business. I will admit I am a little biased toward farmers markets because of it.


I have tried all three categories, though, and they are not all created equal. Here is how the four questions play out specifically for a recurring market.

History and reputation travel together here. How long has the market been running, and is it long enough that people in town actually know it exists? When you ask around, do people speak well of it? You may already have a gut sense of which markets in your area are well regarded just from living there, and that instinct is worth following.


Audience is the one that is easiest to skip, and it comes down to two things. First, what kind of market it is. Farmers markets tend to center on small food producers, though some lean heavier toward craft and artisan goods like pottery or skin care. If nearly every booth is a maker selling something they crafted and there is almost no food, that market is functioning more like an art fair, and the people walking through are not necessarily there to buy something to eat. Markets with a strong mix of produce, honey, jam and drinks are usually a better fit for a baker, because those shoppers already came out intending to buy food.


Second is the day of the week, and it changes the whole personality of the market. Weekday markets tend to be smaller and draw more local regulars. It might never be a huge sales day, but it can become a steady, recurring stream, and that is worth a lot. Weekend markets, especially Saturdays, are usually bigger and bring more browsers alongside the buyers, so go in with a realistic expectation about that mix.


Once you have a sense of the market, go do the research yourself. Go as a shopper first, buy something from a few vendors, and ask what markets are working well for them, where else they sell, and whether there is one they would recommend or steer you away from. Keep in mind that the person selling wreaths is having a completely different experience than you would as a baker, so their yes is not automatically your yes. If you can find a fellow food producer, a honey seller, a meat vendor, another baker, their read on a market is going to be far more relevant to what your day would actually look like.


Category two: one-off events, the wild cards of the holiday season

A one-off is a single event with a start and an end: craft shows, vendor bazaars, holiday markets, fundraisers, or a vendor row set up alongside something else already happening, like a barbecue competition in your town. These happen once a year, maybe twice, and this is the category where I see the most expensive mistakes.


We ask the same four questions, but here is what changes. With a one-off, history carries almost all the weight, because history is what tells you the rest of the answers. If the event has happened before, someone can tell you who came and how many people showed up. If it has never happened, nobody can tell you that, and the organizer is only going to be able to give you a guess. Do not build your baking quantities around an attendance guess, especially for an event with no track record.

I have landed, after three years of learning this the hard way, on a simple rule: if it is a first-time event with no history at all, I respectfully decline. Every single time!


Let me tell you why, with two stories from the same holiday season. The first was a success. Our local senior community center runs a holiday bazaar every year before Christmas, and it was one of my very first holiday events when I was just getting started. It was close to my house, right in my hyper-local audience, and it connected me with people who are still customers almost three years later. That event has a long history, so people in town know it is coming and look forward to it, and it brought out exactly the shoppers I wanted to reach. Even the ones who did not buy that day remembered me afterward. For months, people told me, "I saw you at the Christmas market at the senior center."


The second story is the pumpkin patch. I saw a lot of marketing from a new local pumpkin patch that fall and applied to be a vendor on their opening day, sure it would be packed. It ran ten in the morning to seven at night. I sold four or five loaves in nine hours, sitting there with my kids in an incredibly hot September in Texas, and I came home with a car full of bread. I will say, that extra bread did not go entirely to waste. I posted a flash sale in my neighborhood Facebook group that evening and sold every loaf, so if a day does go sideways on you, that is a good trick to keep in your back pocket.


But here is what actually went wrong. The event had no history, since it was their opening weekend, so nobody in town was talking about it yet and there was no social proof. All the marketing was coming from the organizer alone, and people rarely go out of their way to a new pumpkin patch just because the organizer posted about it. It also had the wrong audience for me. People were there to take pictures, have their fall moment, and pick out a pumpkin. They were not coming to shop, and most of them did not even know vendors would be set up.


That taught me one extra rule I will pass on to you. If a pumpkin patch charges admission just to get through the gate, that is an automatic no for me. Someone who already paid five dollars a head or twenty dollars a car is there for the pumpkin patch, not to browse vendor booths, and you cannot even market it well to your own people, because they would have to buy a ticket just to come see you.


Craft fairs get the same test. An annual, well-regarded event that happens locally is worth trying, especially if you can find a vendor who has done it before and ask how it went. A first-year event thrown together by a local group with no history is one I would let pass.


There is one real exception to all of this: an organizer with a genuine reputation, someone local with a trusted audience and a track record of turning out a crowd. I know one woman in my area who organizes vendor events and has a rare gift for gathering people. They trust her, so when she says shop, they come, and she markets her vendors beautifully, sharing them and telling their stories. Her booth fees run higher than average, and I do not mind at all, because my odds there are so good. If that kind of opportunity comes up, even without history behind it, that reputation is doing the work, and it is an easy yes for me.


Before you commit to any one-off, email the organizer and ask who came last year, how they are marketing it and where, how many vendors they are taking, and how many of those are food or sourdough vendors. If you want the fuller version of these questions, Episode 58 is my interview with a market organizer, and it walks through what a good organizer should be able to answer, and what it tells you when they cannot.


The fast no: an event with no history, especially a pure shopping night like a ladies' night or a sip-and-shop, where there is no other reason for people to be there and the only foot traffic is whatever the organizer can personally bring in.


The fast yes: an event where you did well last year, an organizer you have sold with before, or a vendor row alongside something people are already coming to, like a festival or a community night, where the traffic is built in no matter how the event gets marketed.

Even with all of this, some days you just cannot predict. I can hand you every pattern I have ever noticed, and you may still have a day you expected to sell out that goes slow, or a day you thought would be dead that sells out completely. That unpredictability is part of the business. These questions are not a guarantee. They are a lens to look through.


Category three: pop-ups, the ones fewer bakers are using

A pop-up is when you take yourself and a small amount of product and set up at someone else's location, a coffee shop, a bookstore, a florist, a gym, even an insurance office hosting a networking night. This is not a formal vendor event with dozens of booths. You are it, or close to it, and you either pitch yourself to a local business or get invited. Pop-ups can be one time or recurring, and recurring is where the real value lives.


On sales volume alone, pop-ups are hit or miss, so go in knowing that. I look at a pop-up mainly as a networking and marketing opportunity that happens to have a cash drawer attached. The point is to put yourself in front of people who live close enough to order from you or find you at your market, so it is doing its job even on a slow day. That is why you bring a QR code for your text list along with a light amount of product, especially if you might sell out early.


The best version is setting up a recurring arrangement, maybe once a month or every other week, using the location as a pickup point for your pre-orders and bringing a little extra for walk-ups. You market it to your people, they market it to theirs, and it becomes a win for both of you. It will probably be slow the first couple of times, but once people start to expect you and plan around it, it turns into a nice recurring day that is quite a bit less stressful than a full market.


Before you commit, get three things clear. First, whether there is a fee, a cut, or simply a trade of traffic for traffic, since that is how most of these work. Second, who is posting about it, because the answer needs to be both of you. Third, what the recurring date actually is, since "every Wednesday" or "first Wednesday of the month" is something people can remember and plan around.


Bring less product than you would to a market, and let the first few visits tell you what the location can support. When you do sell out, make some noise about it. Thank everyone who came, and let the people who missed you know they can pre-order next time and get on your text list. That kind of honest scarcity, saying I can only bake so much, is not manipulation. It is a real limitation, and it is one of the best marketing tools you have. If you want to go deeper on using this well, Episode 101 covers it in full.


Pop-ups are a genuinely good fit if your capacity is lower, especially if porch pickup is your main model and you just need more people to know you exist. Just do not expect the host location's traffic to carry the whole thing for you. It works best when you actually market it too.


Already juggling a few of these? Audit before you add another

If you already have markets, events or pop-ups on your calendar, run every one of them back through these four questions once, with a clear eye. History, reputation, audience, size. It is easy to keep showing up somewhere out of habit long after it stopped earning its spot. If one of your regulars fails two or three of the four questions, that is worth a real look before you automatically renew for next year.


Before you say yes to anything

Everything so far is about choosing the event. This last part is about you, and it applies no matter which category you are looking at.


Start with the number that actually matters. Decide what you want to bring home from that day, then work backward into the product you would need to sell to get there. Say you want to bring home $500 at your prices, which means selling 50 loaves. It does not matter whether the event sounds fun or looks good on paper. What matters is whether this specific event can move 50 loaves of bread. A busy Saturday market with a steady crowd all morning? Probably. A pop-up at a florist on a Thursday afternoon? Almost certainly not, and that is fine, because that pop-up is doing a different job for you.


We sometimes get this backward and measure success against the vendor fee instead. A high booth fee at an event that moves all your product is a bargain, and a free booth at an event with no traffic is still a wasted Saturday. The fee is not the metric. It is just a cost of doing business, one your prices should already be covering.


Take a look at your calendar next to your actual baking capacity. If your dough needs a day and a half and your bake day is a full day, every event you accept eats three days, not one, once you count the dough day, the bake day, and the event day itself. In November and December you are also up against Thanksgiving and Christmas pre-orders, which for many of us are the biggest revenue of the year. I say no to nearly every event during those specific weeks, because that is where my energy is best spent. Your limit might be different from mine, but you do have to know your own number. If you have never sat down and actually worked out your real weekly capacity, Episode 45 walks through exactly how to calculate it.


One more warning: back-to-back markets, two days in a row. It sounds efficient on paper, and it almost never is. It usually means prepping for two or three days, baking all day, working the event, then baking again that night for the next one. Unless you genuinely have support, someone who can hold the booth while you bake or bake while you sell, a back-to-back is usually not a good fit. I tried one and said never again immediately afterward.


Last, do not skip the boring logistics. Ask how long the event runs. A nine-hour event is not a longer version of a four-hour event, it is a completely different kind of tired, and my pumpkin patch day is proof of that. Ask about loading in and out, and whether you can park close enough to unload without hauling everything by hand. Check whether the event is indoor or outdoor, since that matters a lot depending on your climate, and ask whether you will have access to power if you need it.


Build one small habit going forward. After every event, write down just four things: how much product you brought, how much you actually sold, what was left over, and how you felt about the day. That is it. By next October, you will have your own data instead of just my opinions to go on.


Final thoughts

So, to bring it all together: the four questions are history, reputation, audience and size. Recurring markets are about finding the right shoppers and a schedule people can build a habit around. One-offs live or die on history and an organizer's reputation, and a true first-year event is usually a no. Pop-ups win through showing up in the same place again and again until people plan around you. And before you say yes to any of it, know the number you actually need to bring home, know your real capacity, and ask the logistics questions out loud.


These events all work better when you bring some of your own people to them too. The bakers who do well at an average market are usually the ones whose customers came out specifically to find them there.


Cheering you on,

Caroline


Keep going

If this got you thinking about your own event calendar, these three go further.


Links to things you might like!


Sourdough microbakery owner looking back at lessons from her first year selling bread

 
 
 

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