KNOW GOOD NUMBERS
We’ve been running this thing since 2015.
We have thought of about one hundred different ways we could try to make an in-person market work, and frankly it’s been a struggle. Every possible solution has some combination of downsides that affect guest experience, our vendors, our partners, and everyone’s health and safety. Earlier this year, we ran a series of “digital markets” to highlight the businesses that stayed open during the height of the pandemic. Shoutout to everyone who supported those businesses, tuned in to Cafeteria Radio’s live DJ sets, and facetimed a friend over some food to check-in.
This month will be our second time doing a Delivery Pop-Up Market. And while we still miss y’all and we still can’t wait to get back together, our regular markets will be on hold until the world is more comfortable and more safe in larger groups. In the meantime, be sure to check out our KNOW GOOD Delivery Pop-Ups and get some of your favorite food truck eats delivered straight to your door.
It been a real honor to see the Market become a place for people to meet their friends and make new ones. We’ve done a lot of good together. The market was created to support small businesses and to create a space of convergence for our disconnected communities. As we close out a challenging year, we have been looking back on the past five years and what we have all done together. We ran some numbers to help quantify some of that good and we wanted share it, so we put together a small series of infographics to help.
Without y’all — our guests, vendors, partners, and too many amazing BL&D interns and friends to count, none of this would have been possible. We want to call particular attention to this last infographic. It’s worth knowing that the Market was originally funded through a small, government grant for $5,000. As we (hopefully) all soon begin to rebuild better, post-pandemic, it’s worth remembering that investing small works, supporting small and even micro-businesses works. A 500%+ return on tax dollars in 5 years ain’t bad. Imagine what else might be possible if instead of seeking community success through giant, silver bullet projects, we did 100 or, hell, a 1,000 micro-grants for new ideas. Sure, many of them would not work, but we think the gamble would more than pay itself back and be less risky than a lot of our region’s decisions in the past couple of decades. We have a pretty awesome team here at BL&D, but we aren’t geniuses, we aren’t special. More than anything else the market was probably the right idea at the right time kinda luck. With a few hundred of these grants we could buy our community a whole lot of luck.
We don’t know when we’ll be able to get up to know good again, but we know we can’t wait. We look forward to rebuilding from the ground up with ya’ll as soon as we can.
Thank you for supporting.
