16 May Glendale News-Press: Back on Brand, Downtown Glendale Market Hopes to Attract More Patrons
Venue returns to Brand Boulevard after a year at a different location.
By Arin Mikailian, [email protected]
The newly relocated Downtown Glendale Market brings a variety of small home businesses to Brand Boulevard, including Andrea Fuentes and her “cooffins.”
She and her dessert, which blends together a cookie and muffin, are new to Glendale, and so far she and other vendors are optimistic that being on the key downtown artery will attract a good number of customers.
“There’s a lot of foot traffic and people wandering around because there’s so many other things going on on this street,” Fuentes said on Thursday.
This was the second week the farmers market popped up on on Brand, between California and Wilson avenues. Before that, it spent less than a year in a church parking lot a block away, where it struggled to attract customers because of low visibility.
When the Downtown Glendale Assn. took over the market, it moved the weekly gathering of produce and homemade goods vendors from Brand, where it had taken place for two decades, to the church parking lot on Maryland Avenue.
The return to Brand, as well as setting up booths inside Chess Park — an alleyway converted into a pedestrian walkway with seating — is seen as a welcome move by vendors.
Alan Janoyan owns JRC Coffee, a home-roasting business, and is new to selling his brews at farmers markets.
With the impending arrival of new multiunit residential developments and new businesses downtown, he said now might be the right time to experiment with selling home-brewed coffee on the streets of Glendale.
“It’s an opportunity to see if Glendale will be open to this coffee… from what I can tell, there’s been a good interest in it,” Janoyan said.
The market has about 20 to 25 vendors, and the goal is to have 30, said Tim Gallagher, a spokesman for the association.
Like its previous iterations, this market is split between produce vendors and people who sell homemade goods.
Local resident Josey Jaramillo had been to the Maryland Avenue market and called that one more spacious, but likes the mix of produce and artisan vendors at the new site. She was leaving the market carrying a bag with three tubs of homemade hummus and pita bread.
“I like farmers markets that are all produce, but they have a lot of good cookies and yogurt,” she said.
Aside from the venue change, there are a few other new features, such as a small stage for live music.
However, the biggest change is the hours of operation. When on Maryland, the market was open from the morning until about 1 p.m. Now the market opens at 2 p.m. and closes at 7 p.m.
The goal behind revising the schedule is to attract professionals in the area, especially when they get off work, Gallagher said.
Janoyan said he’s already seeing the new hours working between the sales of his product, customers at a nearby cookie vendor and people sitting at the scattered tables and chairs.
“This is a great place, [where] people can come down from their office and have a seat and enjoy a drink,” he said.
Source: Glendale News-Press