WEST PALM BEACH — Saturday was the last day of the season for the city’s famous farmer’s market. A lot of people came to the downtown area to see it.
Under a clear sky, lots of people walked around West Palm Beach’s GreenMarket and ate fresh pastries, fish, and coffee. This was their last chance to go before the market reopens in October.
The city-run event takes place on the downtown harbor, but for the first time this year, it also took over the 200 block of Clematis Street, which was closed so that people could browse the stands set up on the road.
This year, the city was able to have more than 100 sellers because of this. The number of vendors will go up again in the fall, said Jessica Kelly, the city’s community events coordinator. The event was so popular.
“We made this place bigger, and it worked out so well,” she said. “Next year, we’re probably going to be a little bigger.”
Suzanne DeLuca and her husband came to the event for what she thought was the third time this year. They drove down from Jupiter. She says she goes to other green markets in the area, but none have as many sellers or as nice a view as the one in West Palm Beach.
“We’ve been coming here for years,” she said Saturday as she ate a crab cake while sitting on a bench in the shade. “It’s nice to see how much it’s grown.”
The GreenMarket has won the “Best Farmers Market” category of the USA Today 10 Best Readers’ Choice poll for the past two years. Kelly thinks that anywhere from 5,000 to 8,000 people come every Saturday.
Even so, the big crowds didn’t always lead to big sales.
Richard Chesler says that this is his ninth year selling hand-made pepper mills and coffee grinders at the market. Even though there were a lot of people, he said, they were “a little less willing to spend.”
He said that his sales were going down because the national economy was unclear because of high inflation and a lack of factories.
He said that he had to raise the prices of his homemade goods by at least 15% this year because the cost of materials was going up.
Still, he said that every year he likes selling at the market. He said it was a way “to keep my hand in it.”
On Saturday, October 7, the GreenMarket will be back.
