The Kirkland Safeway put out a banner advertising an upcoming weekend farmers market in its parking lot. Martha Tyler, the manager of the Redmond Saturday Market, noticed the sign and went in to ask about which farms were participating.
To my disappointment, the manager told me they were setting up tents in the parking lot this weekend and regular Safeway employees would be selling regular Safeway produce “farmers-market style.”
Some businesses do allow independent farmers markets to operate in their parking lots. For instance, the Grocery Outlet on Martin Luther King and Union (market is on Fridays 3 to 7 pm). But Safeway was just going to be selling the same megafarm stuff as it has in the store and pretend it was a farmers market. WTF?
Read Tyler’s whole post here.
Update: According to KUOW, after farmers market organizers protested, Safeway executives offered to drop the term “farmers market” in favor of something like “weekend outdoor market.” But Tyler says she wishes “all retailers would actually buy more from local farms, so the good vibe from farmers markets could be more of a supermarket reality.”
The real coup is not having a farmer’s market at a Safeway parking lot. The real coup is having urban gardeners bring their bounty to an informal market in a Safeway parking lot to sell stuff to neighbours. Better yet, urban gardeners could create a co-op wherein all sales go back into the urban garden and in showing other neighbourhoods how to get their own urban gardens going.
can’t believe they would try to pass the crap they call “produce” off in the parking lot and call it a farmers market! outrage!!
they should call it: safeway’s thrift store food market