this happens at the market i sell at all the time. i dont know what your market looks like but it doesnt seem to upset anything. these late people just miss potential customers.

Where I sell if you come in late you have to hand carry your wares to your spot - no drive up delivery allowed after 9am. Not sure that would work if your market is designed for vending straight from the truck bed. Here it is the parking lot for the fairgrounds. You rent a parking space on the lot. If you get there before the starting time you can drive up and unload if you come in late you have to hand carry or arrange for the security guys to escort your vehicle to your site. All that takes time away from selling so most late folks evaluate how crowded it is and how far their spot is and often decide to just go home.

A market vendor rule without teeth is almost worthless. At our market, where a town street is closed for the market, vendors are supposed to arrive by a certain time or risk losing the space. The vendors on corner spaces have been coming a little late, but it only creates a problem (with me) when they require another vendor to move a table, etc. so that they can navagate into their assigned space. This past week I had to repack my raspberries and grapes into trays and pull my table out of the way so a truck pulling a trailer load of pumpkins could navigate into a space diagonal from me.

I would definately draw the line once market begins for the sake of public safety. If there is no set starting time you have to evaluate the situation. But if i were you I'd shift other vendors into the latecomer space if the late arrival got to be a habit. You can either let them know that it will not be tolerated or tell them that you thought they wern't coming since they hadn't arrived on time.

10 vendors sounds like a small market and in the interest of maintaining membership I wouldn't mention it to anyone if they are only half an hour late. As you probably know there are a lot of 'details' related to living life on the farm and as I know of vendors at our market they often arrive late because "the cows..." or "my kids..." There is a reminder to try and be on time at our AGM but that's about it. Their incentive will be customers not someone organizing the market.

lol....the vendors who arrive late at the market i sell at are the resellers and the bakers.

re selling is a more serious offence at our market. Frowned upon at the best of times. We go way later in the winter, don't show up until 9. This year we are not even going.

At our Saturday market if you are not in place by 6:30 your spot is resold.------ Upnortdareh

We have late arrivals too, but they get what is avaible, not their choice.
I have found that people look for me in My space and some of them won't even shop the rest of the market unless I am out of something.
As for resellers, Kick em out, they have no place in a True Farmers' Market. You may think that if you lose them you will lose customers. Well we stand by the fact we are a Growers only Market and I feel we do better without resellers.
If you want to rid yourself of resellers get your market organixed with strong rules and regulations. I will gladly offer ours to you if you like.
Again resellers have no place in a True Farmers' Market. They tarnish your imagie
Tom

i sort of agree with your rule about resellers but there are a lot of very popular items that would not be sold at the market i sell at if it werent for resellers...sweet corn and fruit are the 2 big ones. there arent a lot of producers around here .

Small market are tough because your trying to keep vendors happy that may not have done this before.
Best to get a group of committed(maniacs)from the town(area) an impart to them that this is a business and that customer depend on what they find at market and having flaky starts or vendor make for a bad taste for all that buy at the market.