The Innisfil Farmers' Market turns 10 this year – and has already received provincial recognition for its innovative marketing programs.
Farmers Markets Ontario presented the Innisfil Farmers' Market with the “Apple” for Best in Innovation, at this year’s Ontario Fruit & Vegetable Conference, held Feb. 19 and 20 in Niagara Falls.
What caught the eye of the judges was the market’s Loyalty Coin program – wooden coins that could be earned by shoppers, and then spent on merchandise.
Market Manager Jaime Grant did her research before launching the Loyalty Coin program last year. She visited other markets across Ontario, and noticed that several had loyalty programs that relied on plastic cards, or plastic tokens.
“I don’t want another card in my wallet,” Grant said. “We really wanted something that was reusable,” something ‘greener,’ and more in keeping with a local food, made-in-Ontario market.
She decided to introduce loyalty coins made out of wood.
The program was a team effort. Students at Innisdale Secondary School cut 2,000 small coins from doweling. Local artists suggested a heart theme for the stamped images – in “gratitude to our customers, for allowing us to exist,” said Grant, who stamped each coin – and customers could pick up a coin every time they visited the market.
There were four different heart designs, with only one design handed out each week - which helped the market keep track of attendance patterns. No purchase was required to receive a chip; on their fourth visit, shoppers could trade their four heart-stamped chips in for a larger ‘Market Buck” coin worth $2 off any purchase.
Visitors could also win Market Bucks valued at $5 each, if they participated in some of the Innisfil Farmers’ Market events, like the pumpkin carving or pie-eating contests.
“We wanted to engage them in a social aspect,” noted Grant.
The promotion was a great success, although not everyone cashed in their chips or used their market bucks. Time and time again, Grant was told that people were treating the coins as collector items. Some shoppers simply handed them back in, to be re-used.
“There’s a relationship there, between the customers and the vendors,” she said – something that Grant has been striving to create ever since she joined the market with her business, The Summer Oven Bakery, seven years ago.
Grant submitted details of the marketing program to Farmers Markets Ontario, but said, “I never really expected us to win, quite honestly, because we’re a young market.”
However, she noted, “the judges loved that we had students making the coins, local artists weighing in on the theme and print, and… community events for people to win them.”
Vendor Rob Radcliffe, of Lakeview Gardens, accepted the award in Niagara Falls, on behalf of the market.
“I’m glad there was recognition of all the effort that was put into it, and I’m very proud to be part of it,” Grant said.
With that validation, she is already thinking of new events for this year’s Farmers’ Market, like a Healthy Eats Day, and a new 'green' initiative - a bag-sharing program, to get away from single use plastic bags.
And she's gearing up for a season that will include another innovation: a second outdoor location, at Tanger Outlet Mall near Cookstown.
The main market will still take place Thursday afternoons from 1 to 6 p.m. in the south parking lot of the Innisfil Recreation Complex, at Innisfil Beach Road and Yonge St., for the 20 weeks between May 28 and Oct. 8.
The second market will be set up outdoors at the west side of the Tanger Outlet Mall, off Entrance 4, every Friday, from 1 to 6 p.m., for 10 weeks beginning June 26.
It was the Tanger Outlet Mall that invited the Innisfil Farmers’ Market to its location. The Mall has provided tremendous support for the new initiative, Grant said. “Tanger has been amazing in welcoming us,” providing not only space, but signage, advertising, even entertainment, from musicians to stilt-walkers.
She is hoping that the second location will make the market more accessible to “people on the other side of Innisfil… Look at us, spreading out into the community!”
Grant has another goal in 2020, during the 10th anniversary. She’s hoping to find a new permanent location for the Innisfil Farmers’ Market – “a permanent home that is visible, that has atmosphere, and that is accessible to more residents.”
While she is grateful to the Town of Innisfil for its support at the current location, she admitted, “Existing places not built for a farmers’ market - it’s not ideal. I want our market to be that place that people say, I want to go there!”
Grant added, “We’re extremely lucky that the Town, the Council and the Staff are extremely supportive, to make this market successful for generations to come!”
The Innisfil Farmers’ Market is already gearing up for opening day, May 28.
“Everybody I know is getting ready for market. It’s exciting!” Grant said. A local beekeeper is developing new honey-based cosmetics, a greenhouse operation is already beginning to transplant pepper plant seedlings to larger pots - “everything is on the move for Opening Day.”
Grant herself is honing her gluten-free recipes - after “a solid five years of throwing things out,” and experimenting, she can now say that her baked treats “provide happiness” - and getting ready for sugaring-off in the family sugar bush, up in the Haliburton Highlands.
Her family taps 90 trees, producing about three bottles of pure maple syrup per tree. Most bottles are used by the family or given as gifts, but some will be sold at the Farmers’ Market this spring.
The Innisfil Farmers’ Market provides “the purest food,” right from the farm or producer to the shopper, Grant noted. When it started 10 years ago, there were only a dozen or so vendors, located on the north side of the Innisfil Recreation Complex.
Now, she said, there are over 80 vendors who participate in the market over the course of a season - about 15 to 25 at any one time - as crops shift from strawberries and rhubarb in the spring, to leafy vegetables and greenhouse crops, to apples and corn later in the season.
Every vendor at the market is certified, through a site visit by Grant, who ensures that they are growing the produce they sell.
“I went to their farms and to their homes and where they make something from nothing, that people want to take into their homes,” Grant explained, praising all of “these connected families that work together to bring these products to market” - bringing a ‘maker’ philosophy and local food to shoppers.
So many people have helped to make the Innisfil Farmers’ Market a success. “I’m just a little piece of it,” Grant said.
For more info or to volunteer, click here – or drop by the Innisfil Farmers’ Market booth at the Innisfil Seedy Saturday, March 28 at the Lakeshore branch of the Innisfil IdeaLAB & Library, 967 Innisfil Beach Rd. It’s an opportunity to learn more, and sign up for an e-newsletter that will keep shoppers up-to-date with special promotions, events, and what’s new at the market - and to volunteer.
In particular, Grant is looking for a volunteer to hand out the loyalty coins at the Market Tent.
It’s a “low impact, high fun” position, she said. “All you’re doing is talking to people!”
