Farmers’ Market re-design and tips for keeping customers, farmers and staff safe

(updated Kerry Rankine, Growing Communities, Farmers’ Market co-ordinator. 27 March 2020)

1. re-design stalls to facilitate queueing and speed up throughput of customers and minimize grouping round stalls in advance of the market.

2. Long, slim stalls like supermarket aisles with baskets at one end and payment at the other best.

3. re-design market layout to plan where queues will go to make sure queues don’t bump into each other

4. Mark queue spacing on ground with chalk at 2 metre distancing

5. Keep communicating with the customers directly and politely

6. Try and secure market perimeters and limit entrance/exit points so you can do:

7. Have people queue outside so you can more easily manage queues and social distancing inside market

8. Have posters and/or info up outside for when they are queuing to help alleviate anxiety and give info for when they get in

9. Keep the farmers and stallholders protected (and remind them about not getting close to customers for their protection)

10. Keep farmers and stallholders hydrated !

11. Use more staff/volunteers to help -but make sure they understand the overall aims and plan

12. Get farmers to think through the circumstances of the staff that come into London (eg. do they live in households that include vital caregivers) and adjust their staffing as necessary, (if they can)

13. consider fewer farm staff attending markets -and having more London/location based staff who do the serving customers, (farm staff do driving/stall stacking etc) to minimise risk of farmers taking infection home.

14. Set guidelines for keeping farm based staff and London based staff apart

15. Get stalls to think through the number/positioning of their staff (as they also need to keep a 2 metre distance behind the stall – this is very hard)

16. It’s possible with a more streamlined system including managed queues to have fewer people serving (and reduce staffing levels on stall).