The market was first held on the second Saturday of September 2006 and has since been repeatedly held each second Saturday of every month. The purpose was to provide locally sourced food to the community.
“Headingley isn’t well supplied with food shops. Back then we didn’t even have a local butcher or even an independent baker.” replied one of the founders.
The Farmers Market follows one simple rule – The farmer has to be the seller. This is so people can feel “engaged with the history of the food they are purchasing”.
The organic Yorkshire food had to be put on hold as it was decided the markets would not happen for 3 months during both this year’s and last year’s lockdowns.
“The business suffered, we had a few outstanding costs. A payment to the council had to be made for the rent of the space, insurance had to be covered and a yearly markets license from Leeds city council.”
Helen, one of the founder’s, continued “The business gets their money from the stall holders for rent of pitch or renting a stall. And if the market isn’t open, we can’t keep up with the payments, so that was a big issue for us.”
Once the market opened back up, the Covid restrictions proved to be another problem.
“We had a one way system, entry and exit, and everyone was expected to wear a mask. This was hard to manage as you can imagine with crowds of around 700-800 people.”
“Usually we bring in around 1200 visitors during the Christmas period, so the numbers had without a doubt lowered during the lockdown period.”
The Market hasn’t been up and running quite the same until this September.
“It will be very interesting to see how many people turn up tomorrow.”
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