Community Building at Easton Farmers and Lancaster Central Markets
BY MADDIE MARRIOTT | PHOTOS BY EMMA SYLVESTER
IT’S NOT JUST THE ABUNDANCE OF QUALITY FOOD that keeps people coming back to our region’s markets—it’s the community. Lancaster Central Market and Easton Farmers Market, the country’s two longest continuously running markets, have created networks of small businesses where locals and tourists alike return to shake the hands that feed them. This tale of two markets is a story of community.
LANCASTER CENTRAL MARKET
The city of Lancaster and the market at its center were created in the same breath. The city’s 1730 charter as a “market town” by King James II laid the foundation for what would become a cultural touchstone for residents and visitors alike in the Lancaster Central Market.
The building that currently houses the market, a cavernous red-brick structure with sprawling rows of over 65 vendors, was erected in just six months in 1889. Built on a slant to help drain water from melting blocks of ice used to keep meat cool before the advent of refrigerators, the market hosts a tight-knit community of vendors and customers three days a week.
“It’s such an atmosphere of community,” says Jason Traverse, who took over as market manager in September 2023. “When something happens in the market, we all feel affected by it.”
Increasingly, in recent years those offerings have become more creative and varied, a continuous reflection of the diverse tapestry of its community. It’s a place where businesses root for each other to succeed. The better one vendor does, the better they all do.
LANCASTER PIE AND COFFEE is one of the newest businesses to add a location at the market. They set up shop in March. All along the way, the team received support from neighboring vendors.
“It was never competitive,” says Meredith Hendrix, one of the bakery’s managers. “It was always, ‘We’re so happy you’re here. We can’t wait to see how you do.’”
Customers, too, build lifelong relationships at the market. The market has created found family for vendor Oliver Saye, owner and operator of HOMAGE: CUISINES OF THE WEST AFRICAN DIASPORA.
“I’ve been adopted by a couple who I call my market parents,” Saye says. “I go to their place, I’ve met their kids, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many great relationships here, and that’s what’s so great about the market.”
Lancaster-born and -raised, Saye saw the value in making the Central Market the site of his fourth culinary business, though it meant adapting his offerings.
“In these markets, you have to capitalize on every hour you’re here,” he says. “I had to attract the breakfast crowd.”
So, Homage made an addition to the market’s growing morning menu in the form of breakfast bowls with eggs, sweet potatoes, black beans, pico de gallo, and a homemade garlic sauce that Saye describes as “breakfast, but with some flair.”
The symbiotic relationship between the market and the city extends far beyond the building’s four walls. Take HAPPINESS IS GRANOLA, for example. The woman-owned small business, which features eight oat varieties, employs local deaf and hard-of-hearing high school students through a partnership with the Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit.
Owner Greta Fairbanks started the business when the Covid lockdown sparked her love for making granola. She’s worked as American Sign Language interpreter for more than 20 years, and wanted to make her bakery a deaf-friendly environment.
“All of the kids that come to the bakery are either deaf or hard-of-hearing and use American Sign Language to communicate,” says Fairbanks. “That space is safe in the sense that everyone can communicate directly with one another. There’s no need for an interpreter, pen and paper, or any of those struggles.”
Giving back to the Lancaster community has always been a goal for Fairbanks. With their Get Love, Give Love campaign every February, the company donates money and products to different local organizations including the Milagro House for women and children and the Boys and Girls Club of Lancaster.
“I’ve always had this philosophy that even though we’re small, there’s always something we can do,” Fairbanks adds. “I really love being in the community. Not just having our products on the shelves, but really being able to interact with the community on a regular basis.”
Entering the market just over a year ago was the realization of an “ultimate dream” for Fairbanks’s business.
“It’s very competitive to get in, so when we were finally able to have a stand there it was one of those big milestones that we reached,” she says. “It’s been so neat to share the space with other local artisans and entrepreneurs.”
While setting up shop at the market is a dream for some, it’s only the beginning for vendors who move on to bigger operations after the market helps kick their businesses into high gear. “Countless times over the years, standholders have used their success at the market to springboard themselves into a standalone brick-and-mortar store of their own,” Traverse says. “While it’s often sad to see these folks leave the market, we are so happy to see members of our market family do well enough that they grow too big for their stand.”
That ebb and flow of vendors means there is often something new for shoppers; the market blends the old and the new seamlessly. Next to where new bakers dish out fresh pies, Kathleen Stoltzfus of LONG’S HORSERADISH minces the spicy root vegetable in a rotary grater that is over 100 years old. Alongside newly opened and culturally diverse vendors like Homage, which planted its roots there last August, the market features the goods of family-operated stands older than most of its customers.
Earl Groff, for example, remembers the day his family opened GROFF’S VEGETABLES over 70 years ago. Groff and his wife, flanked by young grandchildren organizing piles of green vegetables, spread out their chemical-free goods across sprawling tables for shoppers to peruse, and the generations of customers have been as loyal as they are hungry.
“People come and say, ‘You knew my mother when she came here many, many years ago,’” Groff says. “Even if we don’t know everyone by name, we know they’re family.”
The relationship between shoppers and the Lancaster Central Market is a lifelong love affair.
“A few days before Christmas, there was a family here with five generations of Central Market shoppers,” Traverse recalls. “From great-great-grandmother all the way down, they had all been Central Market shoppers their whole lives, including the new baby they had brought along to start off the next generation.”
For Nate Thomas of BREAKAWAY FARMS, one of the market’s primary meat and poultry vendors, being in Lancaster Central Market means being in the heartbeat of his hometown.
“For the longest time, Lancaster was under the radar, and I think it has finally come around to being a foodie town,” Thomas says. (Four years ago, Breakaway started at the market when they acquired Stoltzfus Fresh Meats from its longtime owners. Just last year, they also acquired Shenk’s Poultry to expand their business.)
To Thomas, the long-standing success of the market shows what people are truly looking for in their shopping: relationships with trustworthy vendors.
“We don’t kid ourselves that you can’t buy anything that we sell cheaper somewhere else, so there has to be a reason that people come and shop with Breakaway,” Thomas says. “People shop with us at the market because they believe in our mission, which is to gather people around the table and to support small businesses.
EASTON FARMERS MARKET
On Saturdays, Thomas and his team take their show on the road to another of the region’s long-standing markets in Easton.
“We cut our teeth in these outdoor markets like Easton,” says Thomas, who has been a vendor at the market for 17 years. “The city has been great to us over the years.”
As in Lancaster, Easton’s market is as old as the city itself: Both were founded in 1752. For over two centuries, the market operated in the town’s Center Square until Covid social distancing protocols (and an impending Center Square construction project) forced a move. Since 2020, the market has taken place along the more spacious riverside stretch of Larry Holmes Drive, just a few blocks away in Scott Park.
The market currently boasts more than 70 vendors, but it wasn’t always the bustling scene shoppers find today. According to Megan McBride, the outgoing district director of the Easton market, when she came on board back in 2006 the market was far from vibrant.
“I saw the market’s ability to be an economic driver for the city, but it wasn’t there yet by any means,” McBride says. “We had maybe 10 or 12 vendors at the time and there were just so many holes in what we offered.”
“We had no fruit, we had no bread, and it was clear to me that there was no way to really promote the market and get people committed to coming every week if they couldn’t find what they needed,” she continues.
McBride and the market team made it their mission to fill in those gaps to make the market a shopping destination once more. They formed a group of volunteers known as Friends of the Easton Farmers Market, who brought the missing pieces to Center Square.
They picked fruit from local orchards and bought bread from local bakeries to set up their own stand that would offer farmers market classics. An arrangement with FLOUR SHOP BAKERY was so successful in its first year that the company came on board as an official vendor.
“At first, the Easton market seemed hard to pull off, and there wasn’t a lot of activity in Center Square,” says Mary Venable, the bakery’s general manager. “But Megan did such a nice job selling our bread for us. We got such good feedback. Plus, we love working with farmers, so we decided we’d rather be out there with them.”
The volunteer team’s hard work paid off as more and more vendors joined the market’s growing list.
“Gradually, people started coming down and the market started growing,” McBride says. “This market was built on the backs of our volunteers. Everything we’ve done in Easton is a grassroots effort, and I think that’s such an important message.”
“These volunteers have a real interest in seeing our city of Easton blossom and flourish and become more vibrant,” says Steven Schmid, chairperson of the Easton Market District Advisory Council. “The bigger the market gets, the more people see different parts of the city that they might not have seen before.”
“It was really the beginning of the local food revolution in Easton,” McBride says of the market’s resurgence. “As people came down and realized this was a great market, they started venturing out to the few restaurants that were there, and then people decided they wanted to open more restaurants in Easton.” And then restaurants started buying produce from the market, too, and featuring its provenance on their menus.
TEELS HILL SOAPWORKS, run by Susan Knapp, is the market’s longest-tenured vendor. Running her stand for over 20 years has allowed her to watch the transformation of the market and Easton firsthand.
“When I started at the market, if we had four or five vendors in a week, we felt like we had a full house,” Knapp says. “I’ve seen that we’ve outgrown the circle, and I see what we have down on Larry Holmes Drive. I’m just amazed.”
A typical market day in Scott Park features music, children’s activities, and specialized items alongside the vendors.
“People make a day out of coming to the market now,” Venable says. “It becomes an event that is more than just eating. People are very positive and relaxed when they shop, and they are really nice to each other.”
Just as the troupe of volunteers has remained loyal through all iterations of the market, so has the customer base.
“A lot of markets don’t run 52 weeks a year like Easton does, but to manage to get people to come out all year when it’s zero degrees, those are people that just keep returning,” says Matt Salvaterra, owner of SALVATERRA’S GARDENS, a vendor of nearly 20 years. “When you’re there that long, you get to know people’s families— their kids that were little when you met them are now going off to college.”
“I have customers that I can say I’ve had when we were in the circle and they still come looking for my stuff,” Knapp adds. “With the growth of the market, I’ve seen my customer base growing, too. It just kind of keeps me floating, and it’s as big as I need it to be.”
The market has been a similar business incubator for vendors across the board. “This is what my wife and I do for our family as a job,” Salvaterra says of the farm. “I’m not sure that would have been possible had we not been a part of the farmers market at the time we joined. It gives you an availability to customers, and that’s really what you need on a small-scale farm.”
At the Easton Farmers Market, shoppers can stop for a view at the confluence of the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers.
Christina Check, Patti Price, Megan McBride, and Steven Schmid, at Easton Farmers Market.
Once a consistent crowd was making the trek downtown for the weekly market, it opened the door for more specialized events to fill the city’s streets. Bacon Fest, which began 12 years ago as a tongue-in-cheek rebellion against the local vegetable-focused festivals, quickly morphed into a nationally recognized celebration of epic proportions providing even more opportunities for local businesses to grow.
“The first year, we thought it was just going to be a fun little festival,” McBride says. “It was basically just our market vendors, and we sold out of everything by 11am.”
Two years and many added vendors later, over 80,000 people flooded the streets of downtown Easton for the event, and many continued to return for their weekly shopping.
“Megan was really able to partner with the city and partner with businesses to bring their influence downtown,” Venable says. “Anyone could come down and join the market and feel like they belonged to a community.”
“A lot of farmers markets struggle because there is no backing from the city,” Salvaterra adds. “Easton is kind of an outlier in that way.”
Megan McBride, who has been working with the market since 2006 and is moving on to another position to advocate for local sustainable foodways, hopes the Easton Farmers Market can be a place for all people to shop uninhibited by typical cost barriers to healthy food. The market has accepted EBT since 2011 and matches $10 per purchase to be used on fruit and vegetables through Food Bucks.
“Megan is like a brand new heart in an old, old animal, so it remembers it can be strong again,” Venable says. (Don’t worry, though—Emily Roland, who worked alongside McBride, continues to keep the market’s heartbeat strong.)
“I feel that energy of all the farmers and vendors and shoppers that have come before us,” McBride says. “In this town, you feel that history, and I think that contributes to the special vibe that people get when they come to our market. They just feel a lot of love.”
