Farmers Market Customer Counts: How and Why

By tracking the number of customers who attend your market, you can easily map out your growth. In the article "Farmers' Market Customer Counts," the authors outline why customer counts are important and how to implement this strategy. " If you know how many community members you are serving, this data can be taken to your town representatives, Municipality and local business owners to demonstrate the market's community impact. Customer counts are also essential when charting your market's growth in response to its evolving environment (the addition of vendors, musicians, special events, etc.) Knowing your customer attendance is essential to attracting new vendors."

When counting, it is important to count at every entrance and to use the same time period every hour. For example, counters will count at the half hour, every hour for 20 minutes, meaning 9:30 am to 9:50 am, 10:30 am to 10:50 am, 11:30 am to 11:50 am, and so on.