BY KADIE VICK
FOR THE OBSERVER
OPELIKA — O’Grows summer market started Tuesday, May 21, and will continue every Tuesday from 3 to 6 pm at Courthouse Square in downtown Opelika. Summer Market Manager, Garrett Martinez, believes moving the market to a more visible location will help increase community involvement and accessibility.
“One of the big reasons that we moved it is just to increase foot traffic,” he said. “We want to be where our garden is serving, and also want it to be here and be visible.”
There will be a variety of locally grown and baked goods stationed at tents guests can explore at their leisure.
Martinez said some of the products could include, fresh eggs, poultry vendors and a lot of produce like tomatoes, okra and other vegetables.
“We’re also going to have a rotating list of big vendors,” he said.
In his new role Martinez said he hopes to see market days flourish and become a cherished community event, but also increase community support for local farmers and small businesses.
“A big thing with food and finding healthy food is it needs to be convenient for people,” Martinez said. “So, we are continuing to serve the community and we have stepped into that doing that here, but also we are just opening up more space for our vendors.”
O’Grows summer markets are also structured to support the flexible and busy lives of the vendors. So, while customers will have many vendors that they will see every week and can develop close bonds with but will also get to explore new and rotation booths that they may not have visited before.
“We’ll have a mix of vendors, a lot of vendors that are able to come for a little while and we also have some booths with the same product and maybe different places selling those products,” Martinez said.
Ultimately Martinez said he wants to use the summer markets as a way to celebrate the hard work vendors and farmers do throughout the year and remind everyone of the production and fruitfulness of summer.
“Summer is celebratory in a way, it’s the time of year where the world literally naturally gifts in abundance,” he said. “There’s fruit hanging all the trees, there’s leaves everywhere, there’s flowers. For kids, they don’t have to be in school. Even when you’re working there’s a little bit more of flexibility. You know, it’s summertime.”
This fruitfulness is cause for celebration which he wants to be the feeling those visiting and shopping at the O’Grows summer market experience.
“I’m really hoping that we have a lot of people who kind of become regulars at the market, and it just becomes this paced thing of like alright, like I’m not spending 20 minutes in and out grocery shopping, spending an hour in a market,” Martinez said.