People gathered at the Wilson Square Farmer’s Market at Pine Centre Saturday. Photo 250News

Prince George, B.C. – The Wilson Square Farmer’s Market is off to a roaring start at its new location, according to the group’s president.

The market has now operated outside Pine Centre the past four Saturdays following the decision to move from the previous Third and George spot.  President Maria Pennock says in terms of the number of vendors “we’ve exceeded what we had on Third Avenue, so we’re up over 40 right now and we max out at 60 so we’re pretty much going to top out after our first month or so.”

And the public response at the new location?  “It’s been amazing,” says Pennock “it really has.  Our Starbuck’s has had to put extra people on now in the mornings because we’re here.  Across the road I was told MacDonald’s had an increase over the lunch hour of 50%.  In the mall, our first weekend they actually had an increase of 12%.  So it’s been well-received and it’s been great.”

Conversely, the market had been outside the courthouse on Third for a long time and we asked Pennock whether she’s had feedback from proprietors in that part of town about a loss of patron traffic.  “Well, our first weekend we had a big cake so we went down to the Pastry Chef, of course, because those are our old stomping grounds and we made sure they made our cake for us and it was beautiful, it was awesome.  And she was very upset that we weren’t there any more.”

“Um, we don’t have a choice, it wasn’t a choice that we could stay there or move here, the choice was we no longer had Third Avenue, so we had to find another place to go and this is where we have chosen.  We brought three or four locations to our membership, they voted on it and this is the location they picked.  So we were really, really excited.”

She says “it’s bittersweet but this is awesome.  If we had to be anywhere other than there, this would be our prime choice.  We’re sad not to be there because, like you said, we were there over 20 years and that’s the only place I’ve ever vended at so, this is very new and exciting but, I don’t even know what to say.  We didn’t have the spot, we couldn’t get it, we had to move.”

Now that they’re no longer at Wilson Square, we asked Pennock if the move might mean a name change for their market.  “Not at this point,” she says “it was kind of a quick change because we only had like a month in between not knowing and coming here.  I think we found out in February or March that we didn’t have Third Avenue and we set up here April 30^th.”

“So we did bring it to our membership and at this point we’re just keeping the name.  It might be something we’ll look into in the future but it was, we’d have to throw new names out there and try to figure out what it was going to be and just the time factor, it just wasn’t going to happen so we’re just Wilson Square at Pine Centre.”

And Pennock has something new to share.  “We are now officially a Farmer’s Market, so we are associated with the B.C. Farmer’s Market Association so that’s exciting, it just took place.”  She says previous to this they were a Community Market but members wanted the Farmer’s Market designation.

Pennock says, among other things, it means “we should be getting in on the coupon program that goes out to low income families and they can bring their coupons here and get their fresh veggies and eggs and things like that.  Just insurance is cheaper for both our market and for individual vendors.  It has a lot of perks and, of course, social media.  Now that we’re associated with them it goes across to everybody, right?  So there are quite a few things that are good about it.”

The Wilson Square Farmer’s Market operates from 8:30 am to 2 pm each Saturday.