Farmers Market Attendance Improving, Officials Predict Bright Future

The future of the Forest Park Farmers Market is strong, village and market officials said following several weeks of improved customer attendance in the second half of the season.

“Other than a couple of really bad hot-weather days—where we do our best to bring out sprinklers and cooling stations—the market has picked up tremendously from last year and immensely from the year before,” said market manager Denise Murray. “The future looks good.”

The market is in its third year overall and its second since moving from the Mohr Community Center to the Grove (Madison Street and Van Buren Street).

Lower attendance earlier in the season has been largely blamed on extreme heat but had caused alarm for some. 

One of those was Jessica Rinks, founder of the village’s community garden and manager of the Oak Park Farmers Market. Rinks is in her first year of tilling Purple Leaf Farms, a quarter-acre of village land behind the Altenheim nursing home, for produce to sell at the Forest Park market. In July, Rinks posted a blog entry on the Forest Park Farmers Market Friends site urging residents to “save it before it’s gone.”

But her outlook has since improved. “I think the word is getting out, and I think the nice weather is helping is,” said Rinks, adding that “Forest Park definitely could do fore more attendance—we’ve [still] got a lot of room out here to grow, and we’d like to see more bodies and less air.”

Village Administrator Tim Gillian also gave an upbeat forecast for the market. “It’s been very successful,” he said. “We’ve had a couple of those weeks were it’s been 100 on those Friday afternoons … but every week it gets a little better and we’re in a good season now where a lot of stuff is being harvested.”

The Forest Park Farmers Market was founded in 2010, serving as both as a fresh-food resource for residents and a way to supplement the village’s food pantry. Vendors are required to contribute either food or cash to the pantry. The market is a centerpiece this year of the Village’s Live Healthy Forest Park initiative for offering both healthy foods and a reason to get outside and stretch one’s legs.

Murray said the market has met with tremendous enthusiasm, with residents going out of their way to place pre-orders and request shipping when they can’t make it. But she said that it has also received negative and foreboding publicity and gossip in recent months, which she said is unfounded.

“It’s frustrating when there’s so much good going on at this market that doesn’t make it in the paper,” Murray said. “I have vendors and shoppers coming to me, people stopping me in the grocery store, saying, ‘Is the market closing?’ No!”

One of the primary worries about farmers markets in general is that their massive surge in popularity in the Chicago suburbs has caused a saturation effect with little room for expansion. (La Grange Park’s market after dwindling to a single vendor.)

The Forest Park market looks to avoid that by using a time—Friday afternoons—that accents rather than conflicts with nearby markets, like Oak Park’s on Saturday. The timing is specifically designed to both offer residents more options and allow vendors to set up shop at both markets.

Those vendors at the Forest Park market said despite the slow start, the market can blossom into something special. Many credited the market's move from the community center parking lot to the more spacious, grassy picnic grove as a major plus.

"I don't know that you can judge a market until it's been there awhile," said Christopher Clem, a pastry chef with St. Honore Confections, a small batch bakery serving gluten-free goods. Clem said the Forest Park market's small size affords him an intimacy with his repeat customers. "I can pack up their orders before they even arrive [at our booth]," he said. 

Matthew Dallman is a vendor with Jake's Country Meats, a Michigan-based farm that travels to more than a dozen Farmers Markets in Michigan and Illinois. Dallman mans the booth at five of them. He said what makes markets successful is the careful vetting of vendors, outreach efforts by organizers to educate customers about who's vending, and fostering an overall sense of community.

How's Forest Park faring? 

"It's unique here. It has a small-but-hangout type of vibe," he said. "It's been dead a couple of times, but that's how it goes."

Although forecasts for the future of the market in Forest Park are now largely positive, both Rinks and Murray stressed the importance of residents continuing to get out to it as often as possible.

“I want Forest Park to have a market … and the village wants Forest Park to have a market,” Rinks said. “Farmers markets make me happy. They allow small farmers to be small farmers, to have a customer base, and they bring local food into communities… But ultimately, if people don’t want to buy from the farmers market, it’s a moot point."

“If nothing else, just come outside!” Murray added. “Get off the couch. Take a walk to the Grove.”