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player ready...Glencoe will not be hosting a farmers market for at least this summer as after years of different formats, locations and days of operation, community interest continues to lag.
The village board decision to discontinue the operation occurred after a January 19 Committee of the Whole meeting when trustees reviewed the 2022 farmers market with dismay.
“It was kind of a sad show (last) year,” Village President Howard Roin said.
In 2022, the village moved the market from Wyman Green — the space between Village Hall and the Glencoe Public Library — to a few steps away to Village Court. For the second straight year, the markets ran on Thursday afternoons albeit with different hours from 2021, thus not directly competing with markets in other communities operating on Saturdays.
Also for the second consecutive year, the village retained Taste Marketing, which operates many other farmers markets, to run the Glencoe market.
Taste Marketing Owner Ed Kugler hoped the 1-5 p.m. Thursday afternoon time slot introduced in 2022 would lure people as prospective customers shopped in the village’s downtown. Another enticement at two of the markets was the presence of an ice cream truck, sponsored by the village.
However, substantive interest failed to materialize. Kugler said he only averaged about 200-300 customers per week in Glencoe with only a fraction being dedicated to the farmers market, far smaller numbers than in neighboring markets. Moreover, attendance trended downward as the summer proceeded.
The small customer base led to a diminished interest from vendors who often had to drive several hours to reach Glencoe. Kugler noted at the beginning of the summer 15 vendors participated in Glencoe, by the end that number shrunk to six or seven.
With those economic realities, Kugler chose not to come back in 2023.
“We gave it our best shot,” Kugler said. “Financially, it didn’t work out for me.”
Glencoe Village Manager Phil Kiraly added the village staff did what they could in terms of promotion.
“There was a ton of social media, we were running a separate e-news blast every week,” Kiraly said. “We were working to do everything we could and that was our goal with this as we were going to step up our participation and we did dramatically from 2021.”
The lack of interest in the 2022 represented another chapter for the Glencoe markets that for many years has struggled to find a customer base.
It is not entirely clear what year the markets started, but the village pulled the plug in 2015 due to low interest. They returned the next year with a new market manager with a “French Market” theme operating on Saturday mornings in Wyman Green.
The new theme existed through the summer of 2019. The markets did not operate in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and returned in 2021 with Taste Marketing as the manager.
Compounding the issue was for years the Glencoe Chamber of Commerce oversaw operations of the market. However, in 2021, the Glencoe Chamber of Commerce was absorbed into the greater Winnetka-Northfield-Glencoe Chamber of Commerce.
Terry Dason, the executive director of the Winnetka-Northfield-Glencoe Chamber of Commerce, said her staff concentrated their efforts on the larger and more successful Winnetka farmers market.
“We did not have the capacity of staffing and finances to be able to take on another market,” Dason said. “The Winnetka farmers market is a 12-month project.”
All the parties involved indicated that Glencoe might have been the odd player out in an area where many other farmers markets operate in adjacent communities.
“You need the people to be there from more than just Glencoe,” Kiraly said. “It needs to become a regional draw and I think with the competition in place from very established markets all around us, it is hard to compete in that environment. It becomes very complicated.”
While Kiraly adds in a “never say never” about the prospects of a farmers market renaissance in 2024 or later and he floated the possibility vendors could operate at other village or Glencoe Park District events.
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Yet, officials seemed resigned that this is a village chapter set to close.
“Maybe we just have to let it go,” Roin said. “It does not appear there will be a lot of people with torches and pitchforks at the next meeting asking where is my farmers market because they weren’t going to it.”
Daniel I. Dorfman is a freelance reporter with Pioneer Press.