For vendors of Seattle’s Pike Place Market, COVID was yet another test of survival

SEATTLE >> Like many vendors on Pike Place Market, Scott Chang isn’t sure when the store will resume its normal pre-COVID state.

It’s true that this summer brought a welcome crowd of tourists and locals to the Seattle open-air landmark. Sales at Lake Lee Gardens, the flower shop of Chang’s family, are almost back to where they were before the pandemic closed the market’s picturesque maze of stalls and shops.

But there’s another, more dire reason for See Lee’s recovery: several competing flower sellers have either not come back to the market or are only here a few days a week. They now sell in other outlets that don’t require the long drive to downtown Seattle.

Even Chang is selling some of his flowers elsewhere for the first time, partly as a hedge against future COVID-related disruptions.

“We’ll never leave Pike Place,” says Chang, 36, of the place that has been home to his family business since the 1980s. But the pandemic “was a big eye opener that we need to look for other venues.”

Fifty years after Pike Place Market was nearly razed to the ground in the name of progress, the sprawling institution faces yet another, even more complex nemesis.

Although many of the 500+ companies in the market had solid sales this summer, visitor numbers are still below 2019 levels. Many sellers and farmers are still on reduced hours, and dozen have not returned or are about to return.

“It’s really in the air right now,” says Jim Johnson, owner of Johnson Berry Farm in Olympia, a 22-year-old market loyalty who hasn’t returned since last fall.

Even many of the vendors who have returned have done so by postponing how – and sometimes where – they do business as they prepare for their second winter of the pandemic.

Taken together, it signals changes for an iconic, eclectic retail community that faced challenges prior to COVID, including labor shortages and competition from online retailers, and an increase in farmers’ markets in virtually every city and neighborhood.

Although the Pike Place Market is still the first port of call in the region for a comprehensive “Meet the Producer” experience, “we can’t make a living from it alone,” says Mary Bacarella, Managing Director of the Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority (PDA. ). ) who owns and manages the 9-acre, 14-building complex. The market, Bacarella, “has to adapt”.

“You have been hit”

This personal quality is of course exactly the reason why Pike Place Market has suffered so badly from COVID.

Even after the state reopened non-essential stores in June 2020, the tourists, who historically provided about half of the market’s sales, were all but absent. Though loyal locals flocked, total visitor numbers remained at less than half of their pre-pandemic levels through early 2021, according to the Downtown Seattle Association.

Fewer tourists meant fewer sellers, which in turn made the market even less attractive to visitors.

“From one summer to the next, revenues rose from hundreds of dollars a day to tens of dollars a day,” said Daniel Fleming, 48, a photographer and digital artist who has rented a daily stall in the market since 2007.

The entire market organization shrank. Revenue from the PDA, which bills some tenants as a percentage of retail sales, fell from a record $ 22.6 million in 2019 to $ 13.2 million in 2020, translating into cost savings and layoffs of 15 % of its employees led. “They took a hit,” says Bacarella.

Strike back

Recovery was slow, with top-down relief efforts as well as bottom-up individual action.

For example, the PDA has offered tenants $ 3.7 million in rental assistance; the market’s fundraising arm, the Pike Place Market Foundation, offered nearly $ 700,000 in small business grants. There have been programs to help sellers apply for state Paycheck Protection loans, local advertising campaigns, and even television commercials. And despite the losses and additional expenses, Bacarella says, the PDA still has a cash reserve of $ 18 million and was hoping for $ 11.6 million from a year in August that is said to be $ 14.8 million .

Individual companies have come up with their own adjustments. At the Sound View Cafe, Alex Amon, whose family bought the place almost 30 years ago, has completely redesigned the menu and replaced many complicated high-end items with simpler dishes that “were cheaper for us”.

At the Cinnamon Works bakery, owners Michael Ruegamer and Judy Beggs cut costs by doing more work themselves – for a while Judy did the baking and selling all by herself. They also benefited from customer patience: during the pandemic, Judy said, “people learned to wait in line,” which allowed the bakery to work with fewer counter staff.

Like retailers everywhere, many market vendors found ways to reduce reliance on in-person sales. “We’ve definitely improved our online game,” said Devynn Patterson of Marakesh Leather, a market presence since 1971. The company saw online sales grow from 5% of total sales before COVID-19 to around 35% today.

For vendors with little or no online presence, the PDA organized webinars with tutorials from some of the market’s most seasoned web vendors. Twyla Dill Design’s jeweler Twyla Dill taught sellers how to “go from zero to a Shopify website,” she says.

However, some providers have also found ways to reduce their dependence on the market itself.

“To make up for the slump in sales,” Lynden-based Holmquist Hazelnut Orchards increased sales at 16 other regional farmers’ markets, many of which flourished, even as Pike Place struggled, says co-owner Richard Holmquist.

For Seattle artist Dan Gregory, who had been a Daystall salesman for nearly 19 years, the pandemic strategy was to open a gallery for local artists nearby, which now accounts for 20% of his sales. With the “unknown of COVID, I didn’t know where the market was going, where the economy was going. I felt like I would have a little more control if I had my own shop window, ”he says.

The new normal

On a sunny Saturday in early October, Pike Place Market seems as crowded as ever. The street and stalls were crowded and noisy. Face masks aside, that could have been 2019.

But there are differences. The number of visitors for the beginning of October is still around 75% of the level of 2019, which is partly due to a shortened cruise season.

And although most of the market’s 222 restaurants, shops, and other stationary tenants have returned, only 69 out of 96 farmers and 147 out of 186 artisans had returned as of October 6, market officials said. All in all, the business world of the market is still down around 15% from 2019.

Some of the absences reflect pandemic movements by providers; but they also reflect long-term challenges.

For some of the older vendors in the market, the pandemic was simply a good time to pull out. Vickie Clark Rafael, a 66-year-old Shoreline jeweler, has run a daily stand for more than 40 years. Although she hasn’t returned since the pandemic broke, she had planned to stay until 70 but is now unsure. “This whole COVID reality made deciding what to do so difficult,” she says.

For other providers, the challenge was to find enough staff to run a stand full-time. Some say they can’t pay enough to bring workers downtown. Others say that the very work itself, which typically involves assembling and disassembling hundreds of pounds of products and equipment every day, creates a high turnover.

“It’s really hard to find someone who stays longer than a few months,” says Nicholas Gerber, 24, who runs day stalls for Sweet Things Honey Farm and Herban Farms and has seen many farmers struggle to recruit market staff find and hold.

“There is a magic number”

Long before COVID, the PDA and its vendors faced growing competition from online retail, expanding farmers’ markets, and the improved departments for local products in some grocery stores. The PDA had responded by helping bring vendors online, launching satellite farmers markets in South Lake Union, City Hall, and Virginia Mason – and even a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program of prepackaged product boxes.

As the pandemic subsides, the PDA plans to expand those efforts with a local delivery service and more web support for vendors as the market waits for the region’s tourism sector to recover more fully.

However, given how quickly the pandemic can change course, the main strategy, according to Bacarella, is to remain flexible enough to adapt. “I mean, we were pretty confident when we went into the summer – and then we all had to turn around with the new Delta variant,” she says.

For some vendors, especially those facing work issues or worries about spotty sales, this pivot point could mean pulling out of the market – at least until tourism has fully recovered.

“At the end of the day there is a magic number that you have to do to justify yourself,” says Holmquist, the hazelnut farmer. As long as sales and traffic in the market are going in the right direction, he plans to keep coming.

Others are still trying to figure out their magic number. Clark Rafael, the jeweler, knows the strong summer sales that many sellers saw do not guarantee anything for them or other sellers who are still waiting in the wings.

If she wants to see if the Pike Place Market still works for her, she says, “We basically just have to go down and try it out.”

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