One of our members runs a small-batch cheese stand at a regional farmers' market that, like markets around the country this month, is facing the question every outdoor market faces every November: move indoors for the cold months, or stay outside and risk losing the casual foot traffic that carried a lot of vendors through this year. Some markets nearby made the move indoors in the first week of November; at least one market we're aware of has decided to stay outdoors year-round instead, on the theory that open air is worth more this winter than a warm room. This November the question has more weight than usual, with case counts climbing nationally just as market organizers were finalizing winter plans.
"We'd already signed the paperwork for the community hall before the numbers started climbing again," she told us. "Now half the vendors are asking whether we should be indoors at all this winter, and nobody on the market committee wants to be the one who guessed wrong."
Weighing two different risks
Her stand did well outdoors this year — spread out, easy to keep distance around, and customers seemed more comfortable browsing an open-air table than walking into an enclosed shop. Moving that same table into a shared hall changes the equation, even with masks and spacing rules in place, and she's heard enough from other members about slow winters to know that losing the market entirely isn't really an option either. Her stand carries her through January and February in a normal year; this isn't a normal year to test that assumption.
Her interim answer, for now, is a hybrid: she's keeping a smaller outdoor table running on the days weather allows, and testing a pre-order pickup slot for the days the market moves inside, so customers who aren't comfortable with an indoor hall still have a way to get their order without walking through it. It's more logistics than she wanted to take on in November, and she's the first to say it isn't a real solution, just a way to keep selling while everyone figures out what a safe winter market actually looks like. She's also asked a couple of nearby members running similar stands to compare notes weekly, on the theory that nobody running a single stand has enough data on their own to spot a trend.
What she'd tell another vendor facing the same call
"Don't wait for someone else to make the call for you," she said. "Ask your actual customers what they're comfortable with, not what you assume they're comfortable with." She'd been guessing her regulars would follow her indoors without hesitation; a short survey she sent out told her a third of them wouldn't, at least not yet, which is exactly the group her pickup slot is built for.
She's also watching the same case-count numbers the rest of us are, and she said plainly that whatever plan she settles on this month, she expects to revisit it before the winter is out. That's not indecision — it's the same instinct that serves her well in the cave, where a plan only holds until the cheese tells you otherwise. If a hall starts to feel crowded on a Saturday morning, she said, she'd rather scale back the indoor table on short notice than wait for a committee vote to catch up with what she's already seeing.
If you're weighing a similar call at your own market, our Direct-to-Consumer & Farmers' Markets course covers pre-order and pickup logistics that several members have adapted for exactly this kind of winter transition, and the Membership & Outreach Committee keeps a running list of members comparing notes on indoor versus outdoor market plans this season.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.