Are you tired of creating a new vendor application every week for your farmers market?
If your farmers market runs every Saturday, every other week, or on several dates throughout the year, creating a separate application for every market can quickly become repetitive.
A better approach is to create one farmers market vendor application for the entire season.
You set up your application once, add all of your market dates, and let vendors select which dates they want to attend.
From there, you can collect vendor information, accept payments, review applications, and manage everyone from one place.
In this guide, we'll show you how to set up a farmers market application for an entire season using Marketlly.
What Do You Need for a Seasonal Farmers Market Application?
Before creating your application, think about what needs to happen after a vendor applies.
At a minimum, you need a way to:
- Collect vendor information
- Let vendors choose market dates
- Review vendor applications
- Collect booth fees
- Keep track of approved and pending vendors
- Communicate with vendors
- Manage vendors throughout the season
You could technically build this using Google Forms, spreadsheets, Stripe, Zapier, and other tools.
For example, Google Forms could collect vendor information while a spreadsheet tracks applications. You could then connect additional software for payments and automation.
The problem is that you now have several tools that need to work together.
That may be fine if you're comfortable building automations and troubleshooting them, but most farmers market organizers don't want to spend their time maintaining a complicated software setup.
For this tutorial, we're going to use Marketlly so the application, payments, vendors, and market dates can be managed from one platform.
Step 1: Create Your Free Marketlly Account
Start by creating your Marketlly account.
Marketlly has a free plan with no monthly subscription. The Free plan has a 3% processing fee per transaction.
Once your account is created, you can start setting up your farmers market.
Step 2: Create Your Farmers Market Event Page
Next, create the page for your farmers market.
This becomes the public page vendors can use to learn about your market and apply.
You can include important information such as:
- Farmers market name
- Location
- Market description
- Dates
If your market runs for several months, add the dates that make up your season.
For example, you might run:
Every Saturday from May through October
Or your market might happen:
The first and third Thursday of every month from March through November
Instead of creating a separate market application for every date, those dates can be part of the same seasonal market setup.
This also gives your farmers market a public listing that vendors and attendees can find.
Step 3: Create Your Farmers Market Vendor Application
Now you can create your vendor registration form.
Your application should collect enough information to determine whether a vendor is a good fit for your market.
You can also include your farmers market rules and require vendors to agree to them before submitting their application.
Marketlly lets organizers create and manage custom vendor application forms. You can also use the AI form builder to help create your application instead of starting completely from scratch.
Let Vendors Choose Their Market Dates
This is one of the most important parts of creating a seasonal application.
Instead of asking vendors to fill out another application every week, let them select the dates they want when they apply.
A vendor might choose the entire season, while another vendor may only want four or five dates.
You can collect those preferences from the same application.
This makes the application process easier for vendors and reduces the amount of repetitive work you have to manage throughout the season.
Step 4: Connect Payments
Once your vendor application is ready, connect your Stripe account.
This allows you to collect booth fees and other application payments online.
Depending on how you run your farmers market, you may want vendors to pay when they submit their application.
For example, if your booth fee is $40 per market and a vendor selects four dates, you can structure your registration process around those selected dates.
Having payments connected to your vendor registration also means you don't have to manually send payment instructions and then check another app to see who paid.
Step 5: Start Accepting Vendor Applications
Once everything looks correct, publish your market and start sharing the application.
You can add your vendor application link to:
- Your farmers market website
- Vendor Facebook groups
- Email newsletters
- Local business groups
- Previous vendor emails
Instead of promoting several different application links throughout the season, you now have one main place to send vendors.
New vendors can continue applying as long as you are accepting applications.
Step 6: Manage Your Farmers Market Vendors
Creating the application is only the beginning.
As submissions start coming in, you'll need to review and manage vendors.
Marketlly gives organizers a central place to manage vendor applications instead of keeping everything spread across forms, spreadsheets, email threads, and payment accounts.
You can keep track of applications and use automations and workflows for repetitive tasks such as application follow-ups and status updates.
Marketlly also includes SMS text messaging, which can be useful when you need to communicate important information to vendors who may not regularly check their email.
As your market gets closer, you can also use booth mapping tools to organize vendor placement.
Why Use One Vendor Application for the Entire Farmers Market Season?
The biggest benefit is simplicity.
If you run 20 farmers markets throughout the year, you shouldn't necessarily need 20 completely separate vendor application systems.
A seasonal application gives vendors one place to submit their information and choose the dates that work for them.
It also gives the organizer one system for managing applications, payments, communication, and vendor information.
This becomes even more valuable as your farmers market grows.
Managing 10 vendors through spreadsheets may be manageable. Managing dozens of vendors across several months and multiple market dates can become much harder.
Setting up your process correctly at the beginning of the season can save you from reorganizing everything later.
Create Your Farmers Market Application
You don't need to recreate your farmers market vendor application every week.
Create one application for your entire season, add your market dates, collect the information you need from vendors, connect payments, and start accepting applications.
With Marketlly, you can manage your vendor applications, Stripe payments, vendor communication, market listings, booth maps, and other parts of your farmers market from one platform.
Create your farmers market application with Marketlly and start accepting vendors for your upcoming season.