The Social Life of Findlay Market Dissertation

“Bringing People Together Around Food”: The Social Life of Findlay Market

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

Lisa Marie Beiswenger, B.A, M.A.

Graduate Program in Anthropology

The Ohio State University

2019

Dissertation Committee: Jeffrey H. Cohen, Advisor Douglas E. Crews Anna J. Willow Dorothy Noyes

Abstract

In this dissertation, I explore the social and economic life of Findlay Market. The public market represents a space where a welcoming and civil atmosphere is the background for social interactions (Anderson 2004; Shepherd 2008; Mintz 1989; Bestor

2004; Cook 1976). These social interactions are performed in a space created for economics. In this dissertation, I examine the changing role of the public market using

Cincinnati’s foodscape and Findlay Market as a backdrop. I go beyond Polanyi’s (1957) theoretical notion of “the market” to understand how public markets in general, and

Findlay Market in particular, serve as a framework for social action and establish personalized economic and social relationships between customers and vendors. My research contributes to anthropological literature by moving beyond Plattner (1982;

1989A, 1989B), Mintz (1989), and Miller (1998) to observe the market outside of its economic function and to view it as a process, not just a place. The market is a cosmopolitan canopy which is part of the social infrastructure of Cincinnati where visitors and vendors build community, and where social actors use it differently depending on their status and priorities.

Dedication

This dissertation is dedicated to the students and faculty at The Ohio State University and to Gary, Peggy, April, Gina, and Adam Beiswenger for their endless support.

I would also like to dedicate this work to the staff, vendors, and customers of North

Market and Findlay Market.

Acknowledgements

I wish to express my deepest appreciation to my dissertation committee: Douglas Crews,

Anna Willow, Dorothy Noyes, and especially my advisor, Jeffrey Cohen, for their advice and motivation throughout my studies and research at The Ohio State University. I am also indebted to the faculty and staff of the Anthropology Department for their support and infectious love of the discipline.

I would also like to acknowledge the work of Krystle Klein, Maria Danna, Kayla

Killoren, Meagan Jones, and Evelyn Romeo, for their assistance in collecting data and conducting research.

Thank you to the Food Innovation Center at The Ohio State University for financial support for this project.

Finally, I am indebted to the vendors and management at Findlay Market who selflessly gave their time to participate in this project, and North Market for allowing access to the data from their customer surveys which were so pivotal to this thesis.

In memory of Vanessa Crossland-Taylor.

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Vita

May 2002…………………..B.A. English/Secondary Education, Saint Francis University

May 2005………………….M.A. English, Literature, Indiana University of Pennsylvania

October 2007………..M.A. Media and Cultural Studies, Roehampton University, London

June 2012 ………………….…………….M.A. Anthropology, The Ohio State University

Publications

Beiswenger, Lisa Marie and Jeffrey H. Cohen. 2017. Provisioning, Shopping and

Productive Leisure at North Market, Columbus, Ohio. In Research in Economic

Anthropology. Edited by Donald Wood. Vol. 37.

Beiswenger, L.M. and L. Tremblay Critcher. 2012. Forensic Anthropology and

Bioarchaeology. In Anthropology 2200: Introduction to physical anthropology –

Laboratory course packet. Edited by M.C. Stewart and J.W. Sadvari. Columbus,

OH: McGraw-Hill.

Fields of Study

Major Field: Anthropology

Table of Contents

Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………... i

Dedication …………….…………………………………………………………………. ii

Acknowledgments ………………………………………………………………...…….. iii

Vita …...…………………………………………………………………………………. iv

Table of Contents ………………………………………………………………………... v

List of Figures ...…………………………………………………………...……..……... vi

List of Images ……………………………………………………………………...….... vii

List of Maps ……………………………………………………………………...…….. viii

List of Tables …………………………………………………………...... ……...... … ix

Chapter 1: Introduction ………………………………………………………………….. 1

Chapter 2: Customers at Findlay Market ………………...... …………………...... ….. 31

Chapter 3: Vendor Success, Building Relationships, and Balancing Risk ………...…... 60

Chapter 4: Food Security and the Market …………………………….…….....……….. 79

Chapter 5: The Social Life of the Market ….…………………………………..………. 88

Works Cited …………………………………………………………………………... 103

List of Figures

Figure 1: Gender of Visitors to Findlay Market ...... 34 Figure 2: The Year of Birth of Survey Respondents by Decade ...... 35 Figure 3: Estimated Household Income of Findlay Market Visitors ...... 35 Figure 4: Marital Status of Findlay Market Visitors ...... 36 Figure 5: Respondents Were Asked “Which of the following best describes your primary residence?”...... 37 Figure 6: How Many Children 17 or Younger Currently Live in Your Household? ...... 37 Figure 7: Respondents Were Asked "Which of the following best describes your level of education?" ...... 38 Figure 8: Respondents Were Asked "Which of the following best describes the food shopping that you do?" ...... 39 Figure 9: Respondents Were Asked "Where do you complete a majority of your grocery shopping? (Please select one)” ...... 39 Figure 10: Respondents Were Asked "What is your largest concern when shopping for food?" ...... 42 Figure 11: Comparison of the Different Types of Shoppers at Findlay Market and North Market ...... 49 Figure 12: Types of Permanent Vendors at Findlay Market by Year ...... 52

List of Images

Image 1: Approaching the Market House from the Farm Shed ...... 1 Image 2: Saturday on the Street Outside the Market House ...... 5 Image 3: Customers Shopping at a Produce Stand at the Market ...... 11 Image 4: Findlay Market on West Elder Street ...... 32 Image 5: Amish Poultry Sold at the Market ...... 43 Image 6: A Word Cloud Generated from Customer Posts Made on the Micro-Blogging Website Twitter ...... 57 Image 7: Inside the Market House at Findlay Market ...... 61 Image 8: Two Vendors in the Farm Shed Chat During a Lull in Customers ...... 72 Image 9: Produce Resellers at Findlay Market ...... 80 Image 10: The Findlay Market Farm Shed. A Sign Reads: "Weekends April-November - Food Stamps Accepted" ...... 82 Image 11: A Child Riding a Coin-Operated Mechanical Horse Outside of One of the Businesses at Findlay Market ...... 93 Image 12: The Findlay Market Biergarten, Open Six Days per Week May-October ..... 95 Image 13: The Main Page for FindlayMarket.org ...... 97 Image 14: The Main Page for NorthMarket.com ...... 97

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List of Maps

Map 1: Map of the Greater Cincinnati Area Overlaid with a Map of Respondent Zip Codes ...... 40 Map 2: United States Map with All Respondent Zip Codes ...... 40

viii

List of Tables

Table 1: “Why do you primarily visit Findlay Market? (check only one please)” ...... 45 Table 2: “Why do you visit Findlay Market? (check all that apply)” ...... 45 Table 3: Price Comparison Between Findlay Market, a Conventional Grocery Store (Kroger) and Wal-Mart ...... 46 Table 4: Most Common Words Used in Tweets from Findlay Market Visitors ...... 55-56

Chapter 1: Introduction

What I do is probably the second most intimate relationship that I can have with somebody. My products are going from my store, to their kitchen where they feed their families. It doesn’t get a whole lot more intimate than that. Jay Ward, Gourmet Spices

Image 1: Approaching the Market House from the Farm Shed.

The public market represents a space where a welcoming and civil atmosphere is the background for social interactions (Anderson 2004; Shepherd 2008; Mintz 1989;

Bestor 2004; Cook 1976). These social interactions are performed in a space created for economics. In this dissertation, I examine the changing role of the public market using

Cincinnati’s foodscape and Findlay Market as a backdrop. I go beyond Polanyi’s (1957) theoretical notion of “the market” to understand how public markets in general, and

1989A, 1989B), Mintz (1989), and Miller (1998) to observe the market outside of its economic function and to view it as a process, not just a place. The market defines the social infrastructure of Cincinnati where visitors and vendors build community, and where social actors use it differently depending on their status and priorities.

Polanyi argues that there are three basic exchange systems that define economic life: reciprocity, redistribution, and market exchange. Reciprocity is a nonmarket exchange between social equals, such as gift giving. Redistribution refers to the collection and re-allotment of surpluses at a local level, as seen in the collection of taxes by the government or the assembly of goods by a charitable institution. Redistribution and reciprocity are based in cultural beliefs rather than being motivated by maximization.

Market exchange refers to transactions of goods or services in the short-run, monetarily driven exchanges which are governed by the principle of gains and profits (Polanyi 1957;

Berdan 1989). All three of these exchange systems are apparent in any given society; however, Western societies are dominated and defined by the market exchange system.

This system of exchange eschews long-term relationships between the vendor and the

customer and instead favors short-term, impersonal relationships (Polanyi 1957). Stuart

Plattner (1982; 1989a) argues against this idea and explores the reasons why some customers and vendors aim to establish long-term, reciprocal economic relationships in some situations while avoiding them in others.

Short-run exchanges tend to be impersonal because there is no economic advantage in defining a relationship between the parties involved. The transactions are short, limited, and have few implications for the future. These transactions are generally closed-ended (Plattner 1989a). For example, shopping at a conventional grocery store, it will probably be a few days or weeks before I see the cashier again (if I ever see him/her again). I have no vested interest in a lasting relationship because the transaction is completed when I pay my bill and receive my goods. The vendors at the public market attempt to create a different, more personal atmosphere. Even if a customer is a first time buyer, the vendors engage them in conversation and often offer advice. This personal relationship may not be a strong as those shared between friends or family members, but the relationships forged between customers and vendors at public markets aim to establish long-run economic connections that are social and which should increase a customer’s satisfaction (Foster 1963). Such outcomes should ideally also create the potential for future transactions. “We can use the concept of equivalencies to understand on many levels how exchanges operate. Equivalences describe how much and what kind of particular good or service (broadly defined) is appropriate (that is expected) in a given context” (Halperin 1998, 139). In building long-run relationships, customers benefit.

This may take different forms: a little extra product added to their order, a small discount,

recognition as a regular customer, or knowledge about the products. The value of these connections become identifiable in these little additions. These relationships are founded in our evolutionary past. “In Tit-for-Tat and Win-Stay, Lose-Shift, players are stuck dealing with each other even if they are not enjoying themselves. But of course in the real world we usually get to pick our cooperative partners and stop interacting with people whom we find to be uncooperative” (Cronk and Leech 2013, 81). In the vendor- customer relationship, customers will not maintain relationships if they feel they are being cheated or if they feel they will receive better value elsewhere (Nowak and

Sigmund 1993; Nowak and May 1992; Sigmund 2017). Findlay Market is not the only option for fulfilling one’s grocery shopping needs in Cincinnati. There is a Kroger half of a mile away from the market, not to mention numerous farmers’ markets, a Whole

Foods, and Jungle Jim’s International Market. If a customer believes they are losing on their transaction, they will shift to another option.

Image 2: Saturday on the Street Outside the Market House.

Defining the Market

A public market is comprised of a “group of locally owned, primarily owner operated, private retail businesses leasing space in a shared facility with an emphasis on fresh foods and community services" (Brown 2001: 660). The facility, typically an enclosed building or a group of buildings, may be public or privately owned with rented stalls. For much of the history of public markets, vendors were local farmers who sold their goods directly to consumers. In most contemporary public markets, the vendors are resellers with goods they do not make or grow (Brown 2001: 660). Public markets may not be open every day of the week, but typically, in contrast to the contemporary

“farmer’s market,” they are open through all four seasons.

Contemporary public markets are focused on satisfying the needs of their shoppers. Some public markets, such as West Side Market in Cleveland and Central

Market in Lancaster, PA, sell produce, meats, seafood, baked goods, and other staple foods – in other words, they hope to attract provisioning shoppers. Provisioning encompasses the bulk of shopping much like a grocery store. It includes the purchasing of clothes, personal care items and general grocery items. Provisioning takes care of a shopper’s immediate needs and is typically “highly routinized” and consists of regular trips to a local supermarket (Miller 1998: 44). Other public markets, such as Pike Place

Market in Seattle, attract tourists and leisure shoppers by offering a range of gifts, arts, eateries, and souvenir items. These markets aim to break the routine of provisioning.

Typically, there is overlap between the categories; Pike Place Market does sell staple goods and West Side Market sells souvenirs.

“‘Market-places’ are visible public events that happen at a regular time and place, with buildings, rules, governing institutions, and other social structures” (Seale 2016: 2), but public markets are distinguished from other kinds of markets such as farm stands or farmers’ markets in several ways. Farmers’ markets appear regularly at fixed locations and only during specific seasons. Typically, they are not open every day of the week or year-round. At a true farmers’ market, a majority, if not all, of the products are sold by the people who produced them1. Often, contemporary farmers’ markets allow

1 It is important to note that not all “farmer’s markets” require that the vendor produces that which he/she sells. Both North Market and Findlay Market mandate that participants in the farmer’s markets must produce their products; however, some markets are called farmer’s markets but allow resellers to participate. For example, Lancaster Central Market in Pennsylvania calls itself the “oldest, continuously operating public farmers’ 6

craftspeople and hot food vendors to participate, but traditionally these are places where

“farmers congregate to sell their own products” (Brown 2001: 658). Because of their limited scale, farm stands are differentiated from farmers’ markets. Farm stands, often called roadside markets or farm shops, are typically served by a single family or a couple of farms and may sell only a single product or limited items over a limited period (Brown

2001: 660). The main distinction between public markets, farmers’ markets, and farm stands is that public markets often feature resellers instead of farmers/producers themselves and are open year-round rather than just during farming and harvest seasons.

History of the American Public Market

The American public market was born out of necessity. The first public markets, typically located in town centers or on a town’s wharf, were open air collections of vendors. The first recorded public market in the United States was established in Boston in 1639 (Mayo 1991: 41). This and other markets provided a place where Native

Americans, rural agriculturalists, and hunters could sell their produce and products. Over time, open air markets were covered and gave way to indoor markets, providing a permanent location for local butchers and country people to do business without the concern of foul weather. By establishing market houses, city officials provided a much needed service for their citizens and generated valuable revenue by charging rent to the individual vendors. These arrangements also allowed cities to establish health standards,

market in the country” (Lancaster Central Market 2019) but resellers are intermixed with prepared food vendors, craftsman, cheese mongers, specialty grocery, and farmer/producers. 7

a growing concern among those who became aware of the role of germs in the transmission of disease (Mayo 1991). The earliest market houses were open air sheds, and over time, these gave way to enclosed structures. Building interiors were typically divided into sections for meats, fish, and produce, and a market master or market committee was hired to enforce sanitation rules, collect rent, and reassign empty stalls

(ibid).

While many ethnographers who examine public markets (Bell 2007, Hampton

2010, Anderson 2004, Shepherd 2008) emphasize the role of contemporary markets as spaces where a diverse clientele can interact socially, early markets reinforced the disparities within America’s social class system. Butchers and produce vendors were among the most profitable vendors and were able to afford the costs associated with the best locations, typically at the end of a building. The locations at the end of the building are typically the ones closest to the entrances and therefore these locations receive the most foot traffic from customers. Country folk and those who did not trade every day were given the less desirable middle stalls (Mayo 1991). Class divisions were not restricted to vendors. The upper classes, including owners of elite boarding houses, hotels, and restaurants, were given the opportunity to shop early in the morning to access the best wares. Those who shopped early in the morning paid a premium, but they were also given the choice of the best selection. While there was no explicit rule prohibiting lower classes from shopping early in the morning, many middle class and poor customers were unable to pay the higher prices. As the day wore on prices and selection continued to drop. Wives and daughters of the middle class citizens came in to shop followed by

the poorer classes. By ten or eleven o’clock in the morning, the poorest members of society, racial minorities and the blind, were left to pick through bony carcasses and bruised fruit which merchants sold for less (Mayo 1991).

At the turn of the twentieth century, markets began to modernize to meet the changing needs of their customers. Most markets took on the added expense of offering electricity, and some, as in the case of West Side Market in Cleveland, added public baths to compensate for the lack of indoor plumbing in some neighborhoods (Mayo 1991;

Lewis 1981). Indeed, the 1918 US Census Bureau found that half of the cities with populations over 30,000 maintained a public market (Zade 2009). However, even as these markets were modernized, changes in American business and increased presence of independent grocery stores affected profits. Public markets thrived on their ability to provide fresh goods to their customers at a centralized location, but at the turn of the century grocery stores began slowly popping up in residential areas. In 1946, grocery stores were responsible for only 28 percent of the total share of grocery sales. Eight years later this figure had risen to 48 percent (Zade 2009: 28-29). This is primarily due to the fact that grocery stores were close to residential areas and provided clean, predictable, reliable service. These stores also offered more competitive and consistent pricing. For example, A&P opened its first store in 1912, and by 1930 it had opened nearly 16,000 stores. The Hartford family, A&P’s founders, was able to make deals with manufacturers and distributers which undercut the prices of smaller competitors, including corner stores and public markets (Levinson 2011). Consistent and competitive pricing, along with heightened accessibility, reliability, and trust, were some of the advantages that these new

grocery stores imparted, but they also created a purpose-built, clean public space that allowed shoppers to satisfy their “functional, social, and aspirational needs” (Woodruffe-

Burton, et al 2002: 257). Public markets were unable to fulfill these new consumer demands, and over the decades, they declined in numbers (Mayo 1991; Zade 2009).

This was the case in Columbus. North Market was the second of four public markets to open in the city, and it is the only one that remains (“North Market - About

Us” 2012). While many public markets did close over the middle decades of the 20th century, they did not disappear. Proponents of markets in Philadelphia, Cleveland, and St.

Louis fought for their survival, and with the help of preservationists, advocates, and often the vendors themselves, they were able to maintain and preserve the market. Some markets, such as Pike Place Market in Seattle and Indianapolis City Market, faced lengthy battles with urban renewal organizations and ended up on the National Register of Historic Places (Zade 2009: 28). The story of North Market is filled with similar difficulties. In 1948, North Market was destroyed by a fire. Facing the closure of the market, the merchants pooled funds to purchase a Quonset, and that became its home for nearly fifty years. Over the decades, the market faced temporary closures and threats of demolition but it continued to survive (“North Market - About Us” 2012).

The public market movement has been revitalized. With increased public consciousness about the importance of local food production systems, public markets provide an opportunity for direct sales and interaction between producers and consumers

(Gillespie 2007: 65), as well as entertainment and productive leisure (Beiswenger and

Cohen 2017). As Zade discusses in his 2009 project, local food systems are not restricted

to produce sales between a farmer and consumer. They may include direct sales between local cheese makers, coffee roasters, bread bakers, butchers, and patisseries. There are four main benefits of public markets: they increase the visibility of local food producers, encourage diversification in food production, support local businesses, and create a space where producers and consumers may interact directly (Zade 2009: 34; Gillespie 2007:

65). It is for these reasons that so many advocates have fought to preserve public markets throughout the United States.

Image 3: Customers Shopping at a Produce Stand at the Market. This stand is operated by resellers, so it is on the street in front of the market rather than in the farm shed.

The History of Findlay Market and Over-the-Rhine

Findlay Market was not the first market founded in Cincinnati, but it is the longest lived. Over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, Cincinnati established nine public and/or farmers’ markets. Today, Findlay is the only surviving public market

(“Findlay Market: A Brief History” 2019). Findlay Market was named after James

Findlay, an early Cincinnati settler, retailer, and civic leader, who served two terms as

Cincinnati’s mayor. With profits from his successful retail business, Findlay purchased tracts of wooded land immediately north of the Cincinnati city line which he hoped to develop. Findlay planned to use part of that tract for a general store and a market for local farmers to sell their wares, but he died before his grand plan could come to fruition.

After his death in 1835, and the subsequent death of his wife in 1851, the executors of his estate donated a parcel of land to the city (Schweitzer and Gerbus 1974). “It was stipulated that a market be built there and forever maintained to commemorate the merchant who intended to build a store there but never got around to it” (“Venison and

Bear Meat” 1961).

A new neighborhood was forming on the outskirts of Cincinnati around the area that would become Findlay Market. This neighborhood, later named Over-the-Rhine, is intimately linked with the market; thus, it is impossible to discuss Findlay Market without also discussing Over-the-Rhine. From 1830 to 1880, German immigrants arrived in the

United States seeking refuge from political and social unrest. Many of these immigrants settled in Cincinnati, and by 1841, 28% of the city’s population was German (Schweitzer and Gerbus 1974). In 1845, the Miami and Erie Canal was completed, and many of these

German immigrants settled in the area north of the canal, calling it “The Rhine of Ohio”,

hence the neighborhood they formed became Over-the-Rhine (Schweitzer and Gerbus

1974), and in 1849, Over-the-Rhine became part of the City of Cincinnati (“Findlay

Market: A Brief History” 2019).

On October 28, 1852, construction began on a new cast-iron, open-sided market pavilion for a cost of $12,0002, and on February 23, 1855 the City “Council passed two ordinances, ‘defining and fixing the spaces of and establishing Findlay Market’ and ‘to fix the prices of stalls in Findlay Market House and the days of the week on which

Market shall be held’” (Schweitzer and Gerbus 1974: 7), and the market opened within months.

Shortly after the market was completed in 1855, the area experienced a boom as

German immigrants and German-Americans began to fill Over-the-Rhine with new businesses and residences. This era was the height of the neighborhood with a flourishing population, strong businesses, a plethora of breweries, and high employment rates.

Findlay Market was a bustling part of this neighborhood, and in 1902, it experienced its first major renovation when a masonry tower was added to the structure. A second renovation in 1915 enclosed the market and added refrigeration to alleviate public health concerns about pollution and disease contamination (“Venison and Bear Meat” 1961;

Schweitzer and Gerbus 1974). These concerns were well founded; at its inception, “the market house was of iron all right – sheet iron with no sides or ends, little more than an open-ended shed where meat hung on hooks exposed to the wind, dust and flies and

2 According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index, $12,000 in 1854 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $365,845.71 in 2019. 13

whatever else came along to contaminate it” (“Vennison and Bear Meat” 1961). And while meat and produce were being stored adequately on days when the market was closed – vendors utilized the cool cellars beneath nearby breweries to keep perishables fresh – the public had begun demanding refrigeration to ensure higher standards of food safety.

By the start of the 20th century, 75% of the Over-the-Rhine’s population of

44,475 was German or German-American; however, the start of World War I caused tensions between the German-Americans of Over-the-Rhine and their non-German neighbors (“Findlay Market: A Brief History” 2019). Following anti-German sentiment during the First World War, the German community began to disperse to be replaced by waves of rural Appalachians looking for low-cost housing during the Great Depression.

The neighborhood experienced yet another decline in population in the 1960s as residents began to move to Cincinnati’s suburbs. The neighborhood was repopulated by African-

American residents displaced from the West End due to Interstate highway construction.

Over-the-Rhine never regained the population numbers that it had at the turn of the twentieth century (ibid).

In 1972, the market was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, but the market house and the neighborhood around it had fallen into disrepair. “Like all the neighborhood buildings around her, the old queen on the market square gradually grew older and became faded and shoddy. The wiring was ancient; the refrigeration dated back to 1915; the sanitation facilities were inadequate; there was no air-conditioning; what was modern in 1852 and 1902 was quaint, but utterly impossible if the historic

Findlay Market was to survive” (Schweitzer and Gerbus 1974: 22). The goal was not to eradicate the charm of the old market, but rather to freshen it up in a way that would

“preserve the charm and flavor of her romantic past” (Schweitzer and Gerbus 1974: 22).

In 1973-4, the market was gutted, leaving the cast iron structure in place. The interior of the market was rebuilt, preserving the basic structure and feel of the market while giving it a much needed update.

Over the decades, the neighborhood was marked by civil unrest. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Over-the-Rhine was labeled one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the country. After a peak in violence and a four-day riot in 2001 following the police shooting of an unarmed African American man, the crime rates in the neighborhood began to drop in 2006. The neighborhood is currently involved in a series of urban renewal projects which have brought new businesses and jobs into the area (Glaser 2012). Buildings which were empty have been restored; however, these projects have also resulted in gentrification. “Gentrification is a form of socio-spatial urban development wherein working class or lower-income residential neighborhoods are transformed into middle-class residential or commercial neighborhoods, resulting in the displacement and geographical reshuffling of existing residents” (Deobhakta, 2014: 1).

As David Harvey describes, “Capitalist development has to negotiate a knife-edge path between preserving the values of past capital investments in the built environment and destroying these investments in order to open up fresh room for accumulation” (Harvey

2001: 247). As with most gentrification projects, there are both costs and benefits to this urban renewal. Some of the social benefits of gentrification in Over-the-Rhine include

improvements to public utilities, landscape beautification, reduction in abandoned and derelict buildings, and an increase in civic pride (Deobhakta 2014). But with gentrification comes “displacement of social service organizations, mom-and-pop stores, and longtime residents” (Deobhakta 2014). Displacement of the working poor is often seen as one of the major costs of gentrification (Lyons 1996; Newman and Wyly 2006) because space becomes a commodity beyond a place where people live, work, and play.

The old must make way for the new, and as urban redevelopment took hold, long-time residents were forced out by rising property taxes and rents.

Washington Park, just a few blocks from Findlay Market, was transformed from a site of violence, drugs, and the homeless to a site for Easter egg hunts, concerts, food truck festivals, and City Flea, a monthly “curated urban flea market” (“City Flea” 2019).

But as with all good things, there are also negative impacts. During the redevelopment, which ultimately cost $48 million, local residents fought to keep their basketball courts and swimming pool, important loci for socialization and entertainment. They ultimately lost that fight (Deobhakta 2014).

Findlay Market was part of the redevelopment. Between 2003 and 2006, the market underwent a $16 million renovation. Virtually everything was replaced, except for the market’s historic iron frame. Stalls were expanded and roll-down doors were added along the perimeter of the market to protect the stands from inclement weather.

Electrical fixtures, plumbing, and refrigeration were also updated. The city also gave the market control of twenty-seven brick buildings surrounding the market, many of which required extensive renovation – a project that still continues today. In 2006, about a third

of the market stalls were either empty or under construction. Findlay Market had passed out of consciousness for many Cincinnatians (Troy 2006). But still the market survived.

As Mike Bender, owner of Mike’s Meats stated in a 2006 interview, “We’ve weathered a lot of storms,” he continues, “where else can you buy a good steak hoagie for $2?” (qtd. in Troy 2006).

The market persisted, but with substantial assistance from the City of Cincinnati.

In 2006, the Cincinnati government budgeted a subsidy of $632,000 to keep the market running, and while the subsidies have decreased in recent years, the city continues to cover some operation costs and improvements (Troy 2006; “Fiscal Years 2016-2017”

2016; “Requested Consolidated Plan Budget Update” 2013). There is value in the market for the city of Cincinnati, and even as the population of Cincinnati plummeted through the second half of the 20th century, they held on to this commercial institution where individuals could gather.

Findlay Market Today

There are four major sections to today’s Findlay Market: the market house, the farm shed, storefronts around the market, and the streets surrounding the market where temporary stalls are erected during weekends and special events. Aside from a few of the storefronts and the street itself, all of these areas are property owned by the Corporation for Findlay Market. Many of the storefronts are vacant, and Findlay Market has been

slowly renovating them in an effort to expand the market and increase the goods available to the customers.

Currently, there are fifty permanent, full-time vendors. Twelve specialize in meats, fish, and cheeses, twelve offer prepared foods, seven sell grocery items, six specialize in desserts/baked goods, two sell primarily produce, five sell beverages, and ten sell other items such as pet food, candles, bags, flowers, and Findlay Market souvenirs. There are seventy seasonal and part-time vendors including over forty local farmers and cottage producers. According to the Findlay Market website, about 300 people work at the market on a typical Saturday (“Economic Development” 2019).

Along with these permanent vendors there are temporary vendors who sell desserts, gift items, clothing, household goods, essential oils, prepared foods, baskets, and bread. On Saturdays, there is a farmer’s market which includes the typical goods one might find at any farmer’s market: fresh produce, cheese, meat, eggs, cookies, and other local products. The farm shed is most busy on Saturdays, but farmers and other vendors will occasionally come in off and on throughout the week to sell their wares.

Methods3

“Ethnographic fieldwork is the hallmark of cultural anthropology” (Spradley

1980: 3). The goal of ethnography is to describe and explain cultural behavior and to

3 IRB was acquired through the Ohio State University Office of Responsible Research Practices. The IRB number for the Findlay Market study is 2013 B0181, and the North Market study’s number is 2012 E0013. 18

gain an understanding of another way of life from the native point of view. It involves

“the disciplined study of what the world is like to people who have learned to see, hear, speak, think, and act in ways that are different. Rather than studying people¸ ethnography means learning from people” (Spradley 1979: 3). In order to “learn from people” anthropologists and ethnographers use a variety of methods to gain an understanding of the participants in a culture. This project utilizes a variety of ethnographic methods to acquire data: participant observation, interviews, surveys, and virtual ethnography. This project develops a new approach to ethnography as it pairs traditional methods with virtual ethnography in order to understand how customers and vendors use and interact within the market.

Participant Observation

Participant observation is the cornerstone of cultural anthropology (Bernard

2006). “It involves getting close to people and making them feel comfortable enough with your presence so that you can observe and record information about their lives”

(Bernard 2006, 342). It puts the researcher where the action is and gives him/her the opportunity to collect data. A participant observer may take notes, audio record narratives, film activities, or take pictures. Data generated by participant observations may be either qualitative or quantitative. The key to good participant observation is immersing oneself in the culture while still being able to intellectualize what has been seen and heard (Bernard 2006; Spradley 1980; O’Reilly 2009). “When it’s done right, participant observation turns fieldworkers into instruments of data collection and data

analysis” (Bernard 2006: 342).

For this project, I recorded notes regarding consumer behavior through six participant observation sessions at the market. All of these sessions were conducted from a customer’s perspective and were recorded while seated inside the market house, walking around the perimeter of the market, walking through the farm shed, and seated in one of the two seating areas to the north and east of the market house. In other words, I moved through the market as a visitor or customer might, occasionally stopping to purchase an item or chat with some customers. While conducting these observations, some incidental discussions occurred with customers. These discussions were noted in field notes. These observations were conducted with the goal of documenting movement around the market, what visitors discuss, how customers interact with each other and the vendors, and what customers buy at the market.

Focal follows as an ethnographic method involve following a particular individual for up to a day at a time while recording specific activities performed during that period

(Mulder et al 1985; Evenson, et al. 1978; Altmann 1974). “Focal studies that employ continuous sampling techniques are particularly well suited to the study of social interactions and qualitative differences in work patterns because a sequence of activities can be recorded” (Mulder et al 1985, 324). For this study, two focal follow sessions were conducted with the Market Manager, Jennifer Hertwig4. The first session was from 8am-

2pm on a Sunday in fall 2014. The second session was from 6:30am-4pm on a Saturday in summer 2015. Both sessions involved following the manager and taking notes as she

4 Names of vendors, customers, and market management are pseudonyms. 20

proceeded through her working day. The goal of these sessions was to gain an understanding of how the market functioned from a manager/vendor’s perspective and to understand the role of the market manager in the running of the market. These sessions also illuminated some of the challenges that vendors have as they conduct their business because if they did encounter challenges that were not easily solved, they would call upon the Market Manager to assist.

Interviews

This study also utilizes informal and semi-structured interviews. An informal interview is characterized by a lack of formalized structure or control by the researcher

(Bernard 2006). Twenty informal interviews were conducted with customers outside of the market house. These interviews took the form of quick conversations with customers about their purchases, their plans for their day at the market, and memories of past visits from the market. Informal interviews were also conducted with five vendors at the market who did not have time to sit down for a lengthy semi-structured interview. These interviews ranged from two minutes to five minutes, and notes were recorded immediately following the interviews. The advantage of these brief, off-the-cuff interviews was that they provided an opportunity to gain insights into the immediate thoughts and reactions participants have to the market. These types of interviews are effective when gathering general information about the behavior and experience at the market.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with eleven market vendors and three market managers. The Market Manager was interviewed twice due to her pivotal role in the day-to-day operation of the market, choosing new vendors, and organizing volunteers and other workers at the market; however, all of the other informants were interviewed once. For semi-structured interviews, the interviewer maintains discretion to follow leads, but ultimately, the interviewer follows a guide sheet with a general overview of the questions and topics that should be covered (Bernard 2006; O’Reilly 2009). I utilized a set list of questions for these semi-structured interviews but used my discretion to probe more deeply or follow relevant leads when necessary. Participants were recruited either via email or at the market and logistical arrangements for the interviews either took place over the phone or via email. The informants were invited to choose a location that would be convenient or comfortable for them; this meant that some interviews were conducted at the market, but most were conducted either at the informant’s home, primary place of business, or at coffee shops. All of the semi-structured interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and coded for relevant themes related to changes at the market, how vendors define success, challenges they face, and how they interact with customers and other vendors at the market.

In order to capture the diversity of vendors, I recruited different types of vendors based on their goods and their longevity at the market. Vendors who sell from each area of the market - the market house, farm shed, and buildings surrounding the market - were recruited, as were vendors with varying longevity. The only missing piece is a vendor who sells cuts of meat. Numerous meat vendors were invited to participate via email and

in-person, but all of them declined. This study includes a producer/farmer who sells meat as well as produce at his stand in the farmer’s market and a cheese vendor who sells deli meat.

Surveys

Self-administered surveys were also utilized in this study. Surveys involve following a detailed schedule of questions and can be useful for generating quantitative data (Bernard 2006). A total of 180 surveys were distributed in self-addressed, stamped envelopes over seven visits to the market in the summer and fall of 2013. We distributed one hundred and forty surveys on weekends and forty surveys on weekdays. Surveys were distributed by myself and four undergraduate research assistants: Kayla Killoren,

Meagan Jones, Maria Danna, and Evelyn Romeo. Seventy-five surveys were returned.

The surveys consisted of thirty-four questions which inquired how customers use the market, how often they visit the market, what they purchase, and what they wish was available at the market. Basic biographical information - age, gender, marital status, adults/children living in the household, income, employment status, and zip code - was also collected. The advantage of surveys for this study was that they could be distributed to many people with minimal disruption to their visit to the market, and they generate quantitative data which is useful for developing a picture of group behavior.

Virtual Ethnography

A virtual ethnographer defines the virtual world as a field site and examines how digital media impact the daily lives of its users. They aim to explore the formation of

rich and complex online social groups (O’Reilly 2009; Hine 2008). Virtual ethnography is typically used to study communities that are created and exist within an online environment by participating in online groups and interacting with the members (Hine

2008); however, this study utilizes virtual ethnography in a slightly different way. Rather than studying a field site that exists exclusively online, I use the methods of virtual ethnography to understand of how consumers use the internet to create their experiences and communicate about spaces in the physical world. Using social media as an ethnographic research tool is a relatively new phenomenon, but it can yield some valuable data (Giglietto et. al. 2012). Social media makes it possible to gain an understanding of the experiential interactions that people have at and with the market.

For example, by searching for “#FindlayMarket” and “#FindlayMkt” on Twitter, I was able to see what excites people about the market, including their thoughts on events they attended at the market, the atmosphere of the market, and what they purchased at the market. People use Twitter to share aspects of their life with their followers, and regardless of what these people are discussing, ultimately they end up reflecting on the parts of the market that they find outstanding. By examining the interactions on these sites, it becomes possible to gain a deeper understanding of how people use the market.

Twitter is a microblogging platform where users share their thoughts in 280 characters or fewer (“About Twitter” 2017). For this study, posts (AKA “tweets”) containing #FindlayMarket and @FindlayMarket from January-December 2016 were

collected5. Customers tweeted about Findlay Market 971 times during this time period.

These tweets were coded according to theme using NVivo. After removing names, usernames, and URLs from the tweets, they were analyzed for word frequency. Names, usernames, and URLs were excluded in order to minimize excess noise in the data; for example, “instagram.com” appeared in 192 tweets because customers had linked their

Instagram photographs to their tweets. The word Instagram has no significance in the analysis of what customers are saying about Findlay Market, likewise for names and usernames, so they were excluded from the data set. In addition to tweets from customers, tweets from businesses were collected, coded for themes, and analyzed for word frequency with NVivo. From January-December 2016, businesses at the market tweeted using #FindlayMarket and/or @Findlay Market 1,259 times.

Findlay Market also maintains a Twitter account. Every tweet from January 2015 through December 2016 was collected. Findlay Market tweeted 627 times, averaging

1.86 tweets per day during this period. These tweets were coded according to theme, and a word frequency analysis was performed using NVivo. Their account name “Findlay

Market”, their username @FindlayMarket, and URLs were removed prior to performing a word frequency analysis. This was done because usernames and account names are connected to every tweet. If they were not removed, the data would not have reflected the content of the tweets accurately, and the analysis would have shown disproportionate

5 The “at” symbol (@) is used when a person wishes to interact directly with another twitter user, in this case Findlay Market. Hashtags (#) are used to indicate when a person is talking about a specific place, topic, or idea. 25

usage of the words Findlay and market. The goal was to see what Findlay Market was tweeting about, not to see how many times their username appeared on their tweets.

Archival Research

Archival research is also utilized in this study due to the historic nature of the market. Newspapers.com is the largest online newspaper archive, was utilized to search for any article which mentioned Findlay Market. Newspapers.com was chosen because

Cincinnati’s only remaining daily newspaper, The Cincinnati Enquirer, and Cincinnati’s alt-weekly newspaper, Cincinnati CityBeat, use it as their online archive. Additionally,

Newspapers.com archives historical newspapers dating from 1700, including defunct newspapers The Cincinnati Post and The Cincinnati Examiner. Using this archive, 709 articles which mention Findlay Market dating from 1852 to the present were collected.

These articles came primarily from The Cincinnati Post, The Cincinnati Enquirer, The

Cincinnati Examiner, and Cincinnati CityBeat, although some came from further afield such as the Chicago Daily Tribune, Dayton, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Columbus Dispatch. These articles ranged in topic from renovations at the market and events around Cincinnati and Over-the-Rhine to profiles of vendors. These articles were collected and coded for key themes. Quotes from customers and vendors were also noted because they provide a real-time record of how people reacted to changes and events at the market. Other cultural artifacts, including The History and the Story of

Findlay Market and the Over the Rhine Community Center Dedication Day Program

(Schweitzer and Gerbus 1974), The Findlay Market Cookbook (Mooth 2014), and past issues of Edible Ohio Valley were also referenced.

I also used the Wayback Machine from archive.org. The Wayback Machine was created to address the problem of website content disappearing when a website is updated or removed from the internet. The service creates archived versions of web pages across time, which provides a tool for examining how a website has changed through its history.

Findlaymarket.org has been saved 708 times since December 1998 and April 2019. In order to track changes in the types of vendors at the market, I recorded lists of vendors at the market at key times during the period, such as after the 2006 renovations and each time the market’s hours expanded. I also visited the market’s pages for these vendors so

I could produce a record of the types of products they sold so the composition of the market could be compared longitudinally.

Why study Findlay Market?

Since before its inception, Findlay Market was envisioned a part of Cincinnati’s social life. James Findlay planned his market to be a place where the region’s rural agriculturalists and Cincinnati’s consumers could interact. Findlay Market is part of

Cincinnati’s social infrastructure. Klinenberg (2018) defines social infrastructure as “the physical places and organizations that shape the way people interact” (Klinenberg 2018).

He continues, “when social infrastructure is robust, it fosters contact, mutual support, and collaboration among friends and neighbors; when degraded, it inhibits social activity,

leaving families and individuals to fend for themselves” (Klinenberg 2018). James

Findlay built the foundations of social life, and his market is a glue that binds the community. It is as critical to the success of the neighborhood as public works and transportation.

Findlay embraced three characteristics that the Project for Public Spaces (2003), a non-profit organization which studies and promotes the development of public spaces in the United States, argues are integral for the success of public markets. First, public markets must have public goals. There must be a civic purpose to market activity. These public goals usually revolve around economic and social activity, such as giving shoppers access to local foods, attracting shoppers to a downtown or neighborhood commercial district, preserving farmland in the region, or activating underused public spaces.

Second, public markets should provide a public space in the community which is inviting, safe, and attractive to a wide range of people. “As an effective place where people mix, public markets can become the heart and soul of a community, its common ground, a place where people interact easily, and a setting where other community activities take place” (“Public Markets as a Vehicle” 2003: 7). Third, public markets are made up of locally owned, independent businesses operated by their owners; thus, public markets should consciously seek out local entrepreneurs and businesses to offer an alternative to other retail practices (“Public Markets as a Vehicle” 2003).

Findlay Market fulfills all of these goals. First, all of the business at the market are based locally, and farmers in the farm shed are monitored to ensure that they are selling goods that they produced. “Our goal [as market managers] is to preserve Findlay

Market for the better of the people and for food and to be a local food incubator”

(Hertwig, personal interview). The market also attracts shoppers to the area through events at the market, such as the Findlay Market Opening Day Parade which begins at

Findlay Market and ends at The Great American Ballpark on the opening day of the

Cincinnati Reds’ baseball season. Second, Findlay Market provides a public space in the community which is inviting, safe, and attractive to a wide range of people. In surveys,

73% of respondents listed the atmosphere of the market as one of the reasons why they visit the market, and visitors can see the diversity of the customers while walking through the market: children, parents, college students, teenagers, and senior citizens are all at the market. The market is also attractive for people of varying economic statuses. There are a variety of price points from high priced organic produce to warehouse seconds, but for some products, the prices are comparable to those found at Walmart. Third, Findlay

Market supports local businesses. It is made up of fifty full-time, locally-owned, independently owned businesses, and if part-time and seasonal vendors are included, that number jumps to 122. Vendors seek out the market because it is an ideal place to begin or grow a business, but management also has to be conscious of who they are bringing to the market, how they fit into the bigger picture, and how they get along with others

(Hertwig, personal interview).

Furthermore, as Tangires discusses:

Marketplace culture would not exist without patrons, whose presence gave rise to the expression teatro del mondo, “theater of the world,” which chroniclers have used over the centuries to describe the marketplace as an urban microcosm or city in miniature. Here one could judge the city’s political alliances, social and economic health, and

quality of life. Granted, people might gather in other public places to discuss politics, exchange news, celebrate, and socialize, but only the market could claim so many virtues in one place (Tangires 2003 49).

The market supplies material necessities, such as food, but it also supplies a place where a city can build revenue and individuals may seek opportunities for employment.

Markets encourage trade between small businesses, farmers, and city dwellers, but it also provides a location from which a city can develop. In the 1800s, Over-the-Rhine sprung up around the area of Findlay Market, and today, the market is central to urban renewal.

Findlay Market is part of Cincinnati’s social infrastructure where people not only have access to food, but also a space for political engagement (or disengagement) and social interaction. The market creates security and a locus for community building.

In this dissertation, I explore the social and economic life of Findlay Market. In chapter two, I discuss the customers/visitors to the market. Who are they? Where do they come from? Why are they at Findlay Market? I build upon Miller’s Theory of

Shopping (1998) to discuss three forms of shopping as they apply to the market and propose that much of the shopping at the market goes beyond simple provisioning, thrift, and treats, and instead fits into a hybrid category called gastro-tourism. Chapter three discusses vendors, farmers, and producers at the market. I emphasize the challenges these actors face as they strive for success and build security. In chapter four, I discuss food security at the market. The final chapter elaborates on the idea of the market as social infrastructure and how the market builds community.

Chapter 2: Customers at Findlay Market6

There really is amazing diversity. You will find – I would think every nationality that you can imagine at one point or another is going to come through FM. Just a real quick example. I have a spice blend called Khmeli-Suneli. Khmeli-Suneli is probably the most unusual spice blend that I offer. It is from the Georgian region of the old USSR. I had a couple walk in the other day, and the gentleman went “Oh, Khmeli-Suneli!” and proceeded to have a moment right there. Jay Ward, Gourmet Spices

“An estimated 1.2 million shopping visits are made yearly to Findlay Market-- making this historical landmark the 5th most visited place in Cincinnati (behind

Cincinnati Zoo, Great American Ballpark, Museum Center & Casino)” (“Economic

Development” 2019), but who is making those visits? In this chapter, I will discuss

Findlay Market’s customers and why they visit Findlay Market. To understand shopping at Findlay Market, my analysis models and tests Miller’s theory. Miller posits that there are three dimensions to shopping: provisioning, thrift, and treats. I explore the meaning of provisioning at Findlay Market, examine how thrift becomes a concept among

6 Parts of this chapter were published in Beiswenger, Lisa M. and Jeffrey H. Cohen. 2017. Provisioning, Shopping and Productive Leisure at North Market, Columbus, Ohio. In Anthropological Considerations of Production, Exchange, Vending and Tourism. Published online: 11 Aug 2017; 137-154. 31

shoppers, analyze the role shopping for treats plays, and explore how provisioning, thrift, and treat are interrelated.

Image 4: Findlay Market on West Elder Street.

According to surveys distributed at Findlay Market, the average survey respondent is female (fig. 1). She was born in 1969 (fig. 2), and her yearly household income is more than $75,000 (fig. 3). She is married/partnered (fig. 4), lives in a single- family detached home (fig. 5), has no children living at home (fig. 6), and has a bachelor’s degree or higher (fig. 7). She does over half of the household provisioning

(fig. 8), and she mostly shops at conventional grocery stores, mainly Kroger (fig. 9).

Similar to most of the visitors to the market, she is there for the farmer’s market or to purchase ingredients to prepare at home; however, she may also buy lunch while she is there (table 1 and 2). The survey data only present part of the story of Findlay Market visitors. The median household income in Over-the-Rhine was $16,930 from 2009-2014.

There is seemingly a discrepancy between the income of the “average” survey respondent and the income of neighborhood residents. There are a few factors which may account for this discrepancy: 1) Surveys were primarily distributed on weekends, and neighborhood residents generally shop on weekdays, 2) neighborhood residents may not be shopping at the market as frequently as they have in the past, 3) the neighborhood’s population is declining and thus neighborhood residents are a smaller percentage of the overall customer base of the market, and 4) neighborhood residents may be hesitant to participate in a survey which asks about their income and shopping habits.

Gender of visitors to Findlay Market

female (68%) male (32%)

Figure 1: Gender of Visitors to Findlay Market

Year of Birth by Decade

1930s (1%) 1940s (3%) 1950s (23%) 1960s (20%) 1970s (19%) 1980s (21%) 1990s (8%) No answer (5%)

Figure 2: The Year of Birth of Survey Respondents by Decade. The average adult Findlay Market visitor was born in 1969. Surveys were not distributed to visitors under 18.

Estimate Yearly Household Income 25

Figure 3: Estimated Household Income of Findlay Market Visitors

Marital Status

Single (24%) Married/Partnered (71%) Divorced (1.3%) Widowed (1.3%)

Figure 4: Marital Status of Findlay Market Visitors

Housing Type

Apartment (9%) Condominium (8%) Single-family detached home (80%) Duplex/Townhouse (0%) Other (3%)

Figure 5: Respondents Were Asked “Which of the following best describes your primary residence?”

Children in Household

0 (76%) 1 (5%) 2 (14%) 3 (3%) 4 (3%)

Figure 6: How Many Children 17 or Younger Currently Live in Your Household

Education

Less than a high school diploma (0%) High School or Equivalent (1%)

Some College (8%) Associate's Degree (8%)

Bachelor's Degree (49%) Graduate Degree (34%)

Figure 7: Respondents Were Asked "Which of the following best describes your level of education?"

Who does the shopping in your household?

I do all of the shopping for my household (28%) I do most of the shopping for my household (21%) I do about half of the shopping (23%) I do less than half of the shopping (25%) I live in a household with others, but primarily shop for myself (3%)

Figure 8: Respondents Were Asked "Which of the following best describes the food shopping that you do?"

Where do you primarily shop for groceries?

Findlay Market (3%)

Kroger (69%)

Meijer (5%)

Trader Joes (3%)

Walmart (1%)

Whole Foods (3%)

Other (15%)

Figure 9: Respondents Were Asked "Where do you complete a majority of your grocery shopping? (Please select one)”

Map 1: Map of the Greater Cincinnati Area Overlaid with a Map of Respondent Zip Codes. Respondent zip codes are indicated with red markers.

Map 2: United States Map with All Respondent Zip Codes Four survey respondents are from outside of the Ohio/Kentucky area, but a majority (59%) of the survey respondents are not traveling far to get to Findlay Market because they live in the Greater Cincinnati Area. Of these forty-four, three respondents

are from the same zip code as Findlay Market, eight live less than two miles away, and the remaining thirty-three have to travel 15-30 minutes to get to the market (map 1).

In interviews, I was able to learn more about some of the customers. Karen is primarily a shopping customer who has been visiting the market since she was a student in college in the late-1970s. She visits the market almost every week to purchase vegetables from the farmer’s market and meat from the market house.

I first came to Findlay Market as a college student. I’m not from Cincinnati. I came here to go to Xavier University. One Saturday morning, one woman that lived in the dorms said “do you want to go to Findlay Market?” and I said, “What the hell’s Findlay Market?” And I came down here, and I just thought, “What a cool place?” And so I have moved and come back, and moved and come back, and I’ve been around the world and seen lots of other public markets, and so I just love the whole idea of public markets, and I’ve been shopping here ever since I’ve been living continuously in Cincinnati since 1989. I started shopping here in 1978.

Margaret, a mother of two, visits the market with her husband four or five times per year. I spoke to her as she was sitting down to eat lunch. The market is about four miles from her home, and she enjoys coming downtown to shop. When she shops, her primary concern is finding quality ingredients, and she wishes that the market had more organic eggs and meat. A majority (59%) of respondents agree with Margaret, and listed quality/taste as their primary concern when shopping for food (fig. 10); however, a few customers pinpointed other issues. For Gary, the primary concern is thrift. Every week he drives to Findlay Market from his home in northern Kentucky. He likes the market because he can get “fresher meats at better prices,” and it allows him to support small

business owners. These three visitors are representative of the responses from other customers. Karen began as a gastro-tourist, but became a provisioning visitor as her visits became more frequent and she began to purchase more of her weekly food needs from the market. Margaret visits the market partly as a leisure activity and partly to provision for her family. She enjoys shopping and eating at the market with her family.

Gary’s primary concern is for visiting the market is the cost of foods; however, he also likes to support small businesses. He is making a social statement by seeking locally- produced, quality products, but he also wants to balance cost with value and quality.

Concerns when buying food

11%

9% Quality/Taste Convenience Shopping sustainably 11% Cost 59% Other 5% Multiple

Figure 10: Respondents Were Asked "What is your largest concern when shopping for food?"

Image 5: Amish Poultry Sold at the Market Provisioning, Thrift, and Treats at the Public Market

Daniel Miller models three dimensions of shopping - the treat, provisioning, and thrift - in A Theory of Shopping (1998). Provisioning encompasses the bulk of shopping.

It includes the purchasing of clothes, personal care items and general grocery items.

Provisioning takes care of a shopper’s immediate needs and is typically “highly routinized” and consists of regular trips to a local supermarket (Miller 1998: 44). While it may seem that provisioning is a calculated act, it is a social act as many customers are not only shopping for themselves, but also shopping for their families. Provisioning forms connections between individuals. Miller’s second category of shopping, thrift, takes into account the strategies that a shopper uses to save money and time as they provision. Many people balance concerns that include time, taste, value and source as they make decisions over their purchases. Thrift is not always about price but is manifest

in different ways individuals shop. A visitor may choose to go to the market as a leisure activity, but may purchase items for provisioning as a way to save time by avoiding a trip to the grocery store. Thrift encompasses short and long term strategies that are divided between a focus on immediate needs as well as the future.

If personal provisioning covers the necessities of modern existence and thrift balances a shopper’s time and energies, the treat is more complicated. Miller defines “the treat” as “any special purchase made with respect to a particular individual or group, often including the shopper” (Miller 1998: 5). A treat can be immediate, small and simple like a cookie purchased to reward a well behaved child. A treat can also be complicated and expensive and built around a trip to the department store where the shopper can take a vacation, have a weekend excursion, or purchase something with “no reason behind it other than the desire to possess” (Miller 1997: 45). Ultimately, treats are a small portion of the actual shopping experience and are best understood as a personal indulgence which “help to define the rest of shopping as based around sacrifice and need”

(ibid).

Findlay Market is a public space well suited for the study of provisioning, thrift, and the treat. While a visitor may need to search a little, most of the necessities of daily life can be found at the market, including proteins, vegetables, fruit, eggs, flour, as well as more utilitarian goods and assorted non-food items. As of April 2019, twenty-one vendors sell foods that must be prepared before they can be consumed. Because of the composition of Findlay Market, provisioning is in the design of the market. Twenty-one of the fifty vendors specialize in produce, meats/dairy, and/or grocery items. A majority

(83%) of those surveyed claimed that they purchase ingredients to prepare at home, and

75% state that they come for the farmer’s market (Table 2).

To To buy buy To To To and and purchase purchase purchase To buy The eat eat lunch to dinner To To ingredients desserts/ environment/ Special Farmer's lunch dinner take to take window purchase to prepare pastries/ atmosphere events markets there there away away shop gifts at home snacks of the market 0 15 4 0 0 1 1 0 27 0 16 Table 1: “Why do you primarily visit Findlay Market? (check only one please)”

To To buy buy To To To and and purchase purchase purchase To buy The eat eat lunch to dinner To To ingredients desserts/ environment/ Special Farmer's lunch dinner take to take window purchase to prepare pastries/ atmosphere events markets there there away away shop gifts at home snacks of the market 14 56 40 7 14 14 31 18 62 28 56 Table 2: “Why do you visit Findlay Market? (check all that apply)”

Prepared foods vendors add another dimension to the shopping experience at

Findlay Market. These merchants sell meals to be eaten on the premises or carried-out.

Prepared foods are provisioning because they replace the food and efforts consumers would make if they had to shop and cook, but prepared foods are also a treat because they save consumers time and effort while creating an opportunity to experience foods that are a break from the norm (Au and Law 2002; Chang and Hsieh 2006). They reside in the area between provisioning and the treat.

Thrift is also a factor in at least some of the shopping at Findlay Market. While many of the vendors do sell organic products that are more expensive than their conventionally produced counterparts, there are vendors who sell items that could be considered a bargain. For example, one of the produce vendors at the market sells

“second-hand produce” that has been passed over by larger grocery stores and produce

firms at distribution centers. This produce may be past its prime or it may have blemishes, but it is just as edible as organic produce and sold at a fraction of the price.

Findlay Market also has internal competition, especially among the meat vendors. This means that a savvy bargain hunter may be able to find less expensive products if they compare prices between vendors before purchasing.

In order to test the hypothesis that shopping at Findlay Market is a thrifty option, I recorded the prices of nine food items at the market and at a local Walmart and Kroger.

These prices were recorded in fall of 2016. To mimic shopping on a budget, and in order to be as consistent as possible, I noted the least expensive option at each location.

Ultimately, I found that the prices at Findlay Market were comparable to those at Kroger and only slightly higher than those at Walmart.

Findlay Wal-Mart Kroger Market (Cincinnati) (Cincinnati) 1 lb Chicken Breasts $3.39 $1.97 $3.29 1 lb Ground Beef $2.99 $3.28 $3.69 1 Gallon Milk $3.99 $1.98 $1.77 1 Dozen Eggs $1.50 $1.68 $1.89 Protein total $11.87 $8.91 $10.64

2 Bananas $0.47 $0.41 $0.42 2 Apples $1.00 $2.10 $2.26 2 Oranges $1.00 $1.00 $1.18 2 Cucumbers $1.50 $0.96 $1.06 1 lb Carrots $1.00 $0.88 $0.89 Produce total $4.97 $5.35 $5.81

Grand Total $16.84 $14.26 $16.45 Table 3: Price Comparison Between Findlay Market, a Conventional Grocery Store (Kroger) and Wal-Mart

The treat is a little more difficult to quantify at Findlay Market. When asked if they purchased a dessert or snack during their last three visits to the market, 43% of survey participants responded in the affirmative and 37% claim that desserts/snacks are one of the reasons why they visit the market. Similarly, 53% of survey respondents state that they eat lunch at the market, but only 5% say that it is their primary reason for visiting the market. People like the environment and atmosphere of the market, and though only 21% of people listed it as their primary reason for visiting the market, 75% listed it as one of the reasons why they visit the market (tables 1 and 2). This data, along with the shopping data, suggest that people are primarily visiting the market to provision; nevertheless, thrift and treats are also a factor.

Productive Leisure and Gastro-tourism

People shop for a variety of reasons. Personal motives for shopping include the fulfillment of socially expected roles (being a good spouse/parent and satisfying the needs of the family), diversion or entertainment, to alleviate boredom or loneliness, or for physical activity (Chang and Hsieh 2006; Bardhi and Arnould 2005; Miller 1997;

Woodruffe-Burton 2002). There are social motives for shopping as well: shopping may provide an opportunity to socialize with friends or strangers while browsing through the aisles and even a solitary shopper may be drawn to the attraction of a good bargain so they can brag about it with friends (Woodruffe-Burton 2002; Bardhi and Arnould 2005).

Using Miller’s framework as a foundation, we can follow how shopping in the market falls into the three elements that he defined: provisioning, the treat, and thrift.

Productive provisional shopping fulfills basic needs; nevertheless, Miller’s three elements of shopping are not discrete. As he notes, a person may buy a treat because it is a bargain or they may go to the high end store for provisional shopping as a treat because these types of purchases are something extraordinary or something beyond mere provisioning

(Miller 1998). Building on Miller’s ideas, I argue that in some cases shopping becomes a leisure activity because it serves as a backdrop for exercise, the thrill of hunting for a bargain, and/or socializing with friends (Bardhi and Arnould 2005; Jansen-Verbeke 1987;

Bäckström 2011). The true point for the excursion is to have an enjoyable time relaxing away from the pressures of daily life, but productive tasks are being performed even as the shopper is enjoying leisure activity.

Findlay Market is different from North Market in Columbus, OH (Beiswenger and Cohen 2017). Like Findlay Market, North Market is a locus for provisioning, thrift, and treats; however, much of the shopping at the North Market goes beyond this triad and instead fits into a hybrid category called “productive leisure”. “Productive leisure occurs when individuals complete productive tasks during their leisure time. It maximizes thrift- time by completing productive tasks during leisure and in response to or in connection with finding a reward (treat)” (Beiswenger and Cohen 2017, 137). At North Market, few customers are visiting the market exclusively to shop; they are attending special events or dining and shopping while there. At Findlay Market, however, shopping at the farmer’s market or shopping for ingredients to prepare at home are two of the primary reasons why customers visit the market. The market is crowded during special events, but these events are not the main reason why customers are drawn to the market: Findlay Market is

the reason why people visit Findlay Market. They like the atmosphere and the environment, and they want to buy food there.

Types of Customers at North Market and Findlay Market

31.6% All Three 12.0%

Dining/Special 8.2% Events 0.0% Shopping/Special 5.5% Events 4.0% 23.8% Shopping/Dining 36.6%

2.2% Special Events 1.3%

12.0% Dining Only 2.6%

5.6% Shopping only 33.3%

North Market Findlay Market

Figure 11: Comparison of the Different Types of Shoppers at Findlay Market and North Market

In a similar vein, productive leisure occurs while a person is traveling for business or leisure. Shopping ranks among the major categories of tourists’ expenditure (Littrell, et. al. 2004; Jansen-Verbeke 1998), and over 33% of money spent by tourists is dedicated to food (Williams et al 2014: 4). Gastro-tourism captures the growing importance of food tourism and is “defined as the intentional pursuit of appealing, authentic, memorable, culinary experiences of all kinds, while travelling internationally, regionally or even locally” (ibid). Gastro-tourists seek more than fuel for the body: they seek unique food experiences. The search for food as both sustenance and an adventurous treat is an exceptional illustration of productive leisure and gastro-tourism is evident

among visitors to Findlay Market. When asked what they wish was available at the market, customers emphasized a desire for unique shopping experiences that they cannot get in a regular grocery store. They want pawpaws7, but they also want locally produced lentils, beans, and meats. As Tim explained, “I regularly cook for my family and friends.

I like to cook. I come to the market for Amish poultry and fish because I like quality ingredients.” Jane, another customer adds, “We live in Baltimore. When visiting son in

Cincinnati, we always shop there for lunch and to get ingredients to cook. We visit two or three times a year.” There is a social aspect to the market. Jane is visiting the market with her family, but Tim is taking what he buys and using it to feed his family and friends.

Gastro-tourists do not have to come to the Findlay Market from out of town or far away; for those who live nearby, it serves as a destination spot. Generally, though, gastro- tourists will not visit frequently. Fifty of the seventy-five respondents visit the market fewer than eleven times per year, and only ten visit the market weekly or biweekly. The market manager, Jennifer Hertwig, illuminates this assessment of Findlay Market as both a locus for provision and a locus for gastro-tourism. She explains:

The Saturdays and Sundays, I call Saturday the “Cultural experience” for the suburbanite, and you see a lot of suburban people, even all the way from Dayton, from Louisville, people come from all over to experience a traditional European market. There are people that I know from Germany and from Europe they come and they’re like “this is the closest thing I’ve seen that is part of home”

7 Scientific name Asimina triloba, a somewhat hard to find fruit indigenous the eastern United States 50

which is cool. We’ve still embodied that. […] And I hear, a lot of people complain about it, but really Sundays is where you have a lot of your serious shoppers. Saturdays, it looks busy. It is really busy, but Saturdays people want to buy a waffle and a coffee. Or take- get some street food and eat it, but they’re not your regular customers. On Sundays, you have the same people, you’re going to see time and time again. Tuesday through Friday, same thing, same customers, you know, they might be your food stamps – mainly food stamp based, but they’re going to be the same customers.

Just as the market adapts to its changing demographic, vendors must adjust their wares in order to establish and maintain lasting relationships with their customers

(Plattner 1982). This is equally so for the market as a whole which plays a role in determining which types of vendors to include in their limited space. Over the past twenty years, there have been significant changes in the composition of the market (fig.

12). There has been a decrease in the quantity of permanent meat and dedicated produce vendors at the market, and a rise in the number of prepared food vendors. This follows the general trend in my survey responses. People are shopping for meats and produce, but 55% state that they eat lunch while at the market. The market is transforming from a locus of provisioning to one where people seek prepared foods and other forms of entertainment.

Types of Vendors by Year 20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

1998 2005 2013 2019

Figure 12: Types of Permanent Vendors at Findlay Market by Year 8

Along with the changes in composition at the market, there has also been a shift in the hours and days that Findlay Market is open. In 1998, the market was only open three days per week. By 2005, those hours shifted to include two additional days, including

Sunday hours. This addition of Sunday hours, which occurred in 2003, was not an easy transition for the vendors. Many vendors opposed Sunday hours because they wished to spend the day with family. While no vendor is obligated to be open on all the days that the market is open, some were concerned that they would lose business and might jeopardize the relationships that they had built with their customers. Some vendors believed that customers would not visit the market on Sundays, so they accepted the

8 Information about the vendors available at Findlay Market in 1998, 2005, and 2013 were retrieved from the archive.org Wayback Machine, a service that archives intermittent snapshots of websites. 52

additional hours on a trial basis. According Charlotte Mathias (vendor) customers were indeed slow to accept the Sunday hours. Nonetheless, the market is open six days per week (Tuesday through Sunday) as of this study, and Sunday is the second busiest day at the market.

The expansion of the hours attracted new visitors from outside of Over-the-Rhine.

The population of OTR is declining due to a complex confluence of development plans, gentrification, and a history of violence in the neighborhood. The neighborhood is also poor. The median household income was $16,930 from 2009-2014. For decades, food stamps kept the market alive. In 1995, as much as 75% of the business at Findlay Market came from food stamp purchases (Barrett 1995, 4A). According to vendors I interviewed at the market, this reliance on trade from food stamps continued up through about a decade ago, when development plans began to change the demographics of who was shopping at the market. As Richard George explained:

I don’t have to have chopped ham any more. There’s a guy with a credit card. He wants a $7, a $9 pound of salami. Let’s put some of that in there. That’s how, that’s where my business has gone. I haven’t pushed away the food stamp people. I still sell the stuff that they want that’s available that I can put in my counter, but that portion of my business is shrinking, so is the space in my counter. Instead of Dutch loaf, jalapeno loaf, now there’s peppered salami, Milano salami, sopressata. White guy with a credit card, black guy with a food stamp card. Less of them, more of these.

As public markets gain popularity across the United States, many existing markets adjust to better suit the needs of their customers. Findlay Market is no exception. Over the past twenty years, it has made significant changes in what it offers to its customers

and is striving to continue to solicit feedback in order to better serve its customers; however, there has also been changes in how the customers use the market. In 1998, there were relatively few prepared food and beverage vendors. Today these numbers have increased significantly and people are regularly stopping to eat at the market while they complete their shopping.

Social Media and the Market

In order to gain a deeper understanding of the market, I also examined tweets from customers at the market. These tweets were dated from January 1, 2016 through

December 31, 2016 and were tagged with either #findlaymarket or @findlaymarket.

Upon analysis, I found a definite sense of place in these posts. After the phrase Findlay

Market, the most common word in these posts was Cincinnati which was used 146 times;

Cincy (including #cinci, #cincy, @cincy, Cinci, @CityofCincy, #Cincygram,

#CincyUSA, @CincyUSA, and Cincy) appeared 107 times. Over-the-Rhine (#OTR,

@OTR, @OTRCincy, #OTRCincy, and #ThisIsOTR) featured in 86 tweets, and The

Cincinnati Streetcar – which opened in September 2016 and connects Cincinnati's riverfront at The Banks, Downtown and Over-the-Rhine – was featured in 35 posts.

Customers were eager to post about their favorite prepared food vendors at the market.

Eli’s Barbeque was mentioned 22 times, Taste of Belgium 17 times, and Pho Lang Thang was invoked 21 times either through the word pho or the name of the restaurant (Table

3).

Table 4: Most Common Words Used in Tweets from Findlay Market Visitors Word Count Weighted Similar Words Percentage @findlaymarket 1008 11.69% #findlaymarket, @findlaymarket cincinnati 146 1.69% #cincinnati, cincinnati markets 124 1.44% #market, #markets, market, marketing, markets findlay 101 1.17% #findlay, findlay day 96 1.11% day, days cincy 86 1.00% #cinci, #cincy, @cincy, cinci, cincy, @cityofcincy great 85 0.99% great today 72 0.84% today parade 59 0.68% #parade, parade, parades loving 58 0.67% love, loved, lovely, loving reds 55 0.64% #reds, @reds, red, reds otr 51 0.59% #otr, otr opening 49 0.57% open, opened, opener, opening, opens morning 40 0.46% morn, morning, mornings place 38 0.44% place, places getting 37 0.43% get, gets, getting foods 37 0.43% #food, food, foods connector 37 0.43% connector like 36 0.42% like, liked, likely, likes cincystreetcar 35 0.41% #cincystreetcar, @cincystreetcar, cincystreetcar @cb 35 0.41% @cb beauty 34 0.39% #beautiful, #beauty, beautiful, beauty #openingday 33 0.38% #openingday One 32 0.37% one, ones good 31 0.36% good, goods stop 30 0.35% stop, stopped, stopping looking 30 0.35% look, looked, looking, looks new 30 0.35% new time 26 0.30% time, times first 26 0.30% first thanks 26 0.30% thank, thankful, thankfully, thanks weekends 26 0.30% #weekend, weekend, weekends just 24 0.28% just lunch 24 0.28% lunch coming 23 0.27% come, comes, coming streetcar 23 0.27% #streetcar, streetcar locally 22 0.26% #local, local, locally See 22 0.26% see, seeing @elisbbqcincy 22 0.26% #elisbbqcincy, @elisbbqcincy @wcpo 22 0.26% @wcpo make 21 0.24% make, makes, making

made 21 0.24% made now 21 0.24% now @otrcincy 20 0.23% #otrcincy, @otrcincy america 19 0.22% #america, america @findlaykitchen 19 0.22% @findlaykitchen fresh 19 0.22% fresh needs 18 0.21% need, needs year 18 0.21% year, years weeks 18 0.21% week, weekly, weeks saturday 18 0.21% #saturday, #saturdays, saturday ready 18 0.21% ready @tasteofbelgium 17 0.20% #tasteofbelgium, @tasteofbelgium enjoy 17 0.20% enjoy, enjoyed, enjoying Fun 17 0.20% #fun, fun #openingdayparade 17 0.20% #openingdayparade named 16 0.19% named, names, naming check 16 0.19% check, checking help 16 0.19% help, helped, helping, helps riding 16 0.19% ride, riding always 16 0.19% always amazing 16 0.19% amazing vendors 16 0.19% vendor, vendors visit 16 0.19% visit, visited, visiting, visits bacon 15 0.17% #bacon, bacon #thisisotr 15 0.17% #thisisotr best 15 0.17% best city 15 0.17% city

Image 6: A Word Cloud Generated from Customer Posts Made on the Micro- Blogging Website Twitter

Invoking these places and spaces has purpose for active social media users.

“People generate or share tweets about news, personal feelings, and other useful information. By doing so they believe that they enhance the knowledge and enjoyment of their social group and they enjoy watching others' reactions such as positive replies to or retweeting of the posts” (Yoo, et. al. 2014). These customers use Twitter to build social relationships and status with their followers. Over half of the tweets (525) contained either photographs or Instagram links. Visitors posted pictures of the sights around the market, themselves, their friends, and their family members sitting or standing in front of the market house. They share pictures of the food they eat and purchase. The recurrent themes are fun, the atmosphere, changes at the market, vendors that they like, and friends

with whom they visited the market, but above all, they discuss the food they ate, bought, and love. A customer’s use of Twitter reinforces the market’s role as a locus of gastro- tourism. Just as a visitor to Pisa might tweet a picture of themselves holding up the

Leaning Tower to declare “I was here,” a customer to Findlay Market might tweet their favorite foods or a picture of themselves posing in front of the market house. Twitter creates a digital footprint for urban tourists and visitors to sites (Salas-Olmedo et al,

2018).

There are a few customers who regularly post about the market. I reached out to these Twitter users via direct message to ask their thoughts about the market. I received one response. She indicated that she was a weekend and weekday shopper, but likes to visit on weekdays because it is less busy and parking is less expensive. She explains,

I like Findlay Market because it's historic (165 years old) and local. I'm big on "supporting local", especially with food, because there are so many "big box" stores and chains that are muting out the small, hardworking family businesses out there these days. I enjoy it over a traditional market because it's partially outdoors, again, locally sourced, and although the majority of vendors are permanent vendors, during the warmer months there are "pop up stands" and various farm stands outside that change daily and weekly. […] My favorite vendor by far is Bender Meats - they are well known for their variety of bacon, especially seasoned bacon, that changes frequently. In fact, they have come to know me there as a regular and gave me a t-shirt to say thanks.

At Findlay Market visitors are building relationships, and as discussed in the next chapter, these relationships offer security. Both parties maintain the relationship through

buying/selling, even if additional bargain or profit exists elsewhere. They know that if they maintain the relationship, the relationship will continue even if one of the parties is facing a hardship (Platner 1989B). Customers build relationships with vendors and the vendors with the customers, and each return to the market reinforces these relationships.

Chapter 3: Vendor Success, Building Relationships, and Balancing Risk

It’s a show. People like a show when they come down here. They like [employee] and I joking with one another. They like us throwing bread at them. They like seeing cookies come out of the oven [...]. They like seeing us baking bread that they can smell was just baked. I’m learning that a little bit from everyone else, but I’m unique that I’m the only one baking this product here. Lisa Hartzel, Lisa’s Bread and Sandwiches

In this chapter, I discuss how vendors define success, what they do to make their businesses successful, and the challenges they face. Success is not exclusively based on economic achievement at the public market. It is partly determined by how they create themselves as a social actor. Many vendors have goals that stretch beyond financial success for their business; paying employees a living wage, educating the public about new ways of eating, donating to charity, and having a positive impact on others are just a few of those goals for vendors at the market. Their successes may be based on expressiveness, communication, charisma, marketing, and adaptability. Although vendors recognize the importance of reading their neighbors’ successes and cooperating with them, they also understand that they are competing for the limited dollars and creating themselves (Plattner 1982; Antrosio and Colloredo-Mansfeld 2015; Shepherd

2008). Vendors are agents who create different social and economic outcomes through

their efforts. These outcomes are achieved by building relationships, establishing trust, and balancing risk.

Image 7: Inside the Market House at Findlay Market

I conducted semi-structured interviews with three of the market’s managers and eleven vendors, including permanent and weekend vendors, “legacy vendors” whose business has been at the market for multiple generations, vendors who have been at the market for more than a decade, and new vendors. In order to encompass the diversity of vendors, different types of vendors were recruited based on the goods they sell. Vendors and management who were interviewed include:

• Jennifer Hertwig, Market Manager. She started working at the market in her teens when the market was only open one day per week. After attending college, she returned to the market as the Farm Market Manager. She was

later promoted to Market Manager. At the time of our last interview, she had been part of the management team for six years. • Michelle Calvo, Resource Development Director and Director of Communications, she has been shopping at the market regularly since 1978, and she began working at the market in 2007. Her primary role at the market is fundraising from donors, writing grants, and developing new initiatives to help bring success to the market. • Mark Hall, Findlay Market Farms Manager and owner of Kennywood Farms, sells in the farm shed. Mark has been a farmer for over twenty years and has sold at Findlay Market for approximately ten years. He sells goat, chicken, eggs, and vegetables, and strawberries. He has a BA in plant and soil science and a masters in science in natural resource planning. • Jay Ward, Gourmet Spices, sells in the market house. Jay has been a purveyor of herbs and spices at Findlay Market since 2006. He also sells t-shirts and aprons. Prior to beginning Gourmet Spices, Jay worked in Information Technology. He uses his IT background to support his business at Findlay Market by selling online and by creating a digital cookbook which features his many herbs and spices. • Kenny Mason, Mary Ann’s Produce Market, owns and sells from one of the buildings south of the market house and has been selling at the market since 2008. Kenny primarily sells fruits and vegetables, but he also sells snacks, eggs, jams, dried fruits, cold beverages, and shirts. His wife runs a Cincinnati food-tour business which is based out of Findlay Market. His products come from all over the world as well as locally. He previously worked in design and occasionally takes on freelance design jobs during the winter. • Charlotte Mathias, Mathias’s produce market and grocery, sells from one of the buildings north of the market house and has been selling at the market since 2001. She and her husband sell produce, meats, eggs, diary, juice, cold beverages, gelato, bread, and a variety of grocery items, including dried beans and flour. Most of their products come from local producers, and Amish and Mennonite families in Adams County, Ohio. Her husband previously worked for a major corporation based out of Cincinnati. • Pierce Hill, bean-to-bar chocolate company, sells from a building south of the market house. He has been producing and selling chocolate bars from Findlay Market since 2014. He began this business with his wife after retiring from his job with an aeronautics firm. • Don Kase, cheesemaker, sells at the farmer’s market. Don produces his cheese in Kentucky using local, grass-fed cow’s milk and sells at seven farmer’s markets in Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio. Has been selling at Findlay Market since 2011. He began his cheese making business after leaving his job as clinical microbiologist. He also runs a printing business adjacent to his cheese business.

• Amy Wald, farmer, sells at the farmer’s market on Sundays. Amy grows fruit, vegetables, herbs, and flowers on a farm in Kentucky. In addition to selling at Findlay Market, she sells directly to local restaurants and has a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program where individuals or families can subscribe to receive part of her weekly harvest from mid-May to mid- November (26 weeks). She has been selling at Findlay Market since 2014. Prior to starting her farm, she worked as an ecologist. • Richard George, cheese and meat vendor, sells in the market house. Richard is a legacy vendor whose family has been selling at the market since the 1920s. He has owned the business since 1981. He sells lunchmeat, cheese, fresh dairy, eggs olives, salads, and fudge. Most of his products come from distributors; however, his partner makes fudge and he roasts beef and turkey to sell as lunch meat. He has spent virtually his entire life working behind various stands in the market house and has a close relationship with many of the other vendors. When his business hits it centennial in a few years, he will have been at the helm for over half of its existence. • Ean Lehrer, prepared food, sells barbeque from one of the buildings south of the market house. Ean has been in business since 2012 and opened his restaurant at Findlay Market in 2015. He previously worked in banking and sales. He • Lisa Hartzel, Lisa’s Bread and Sandwiches, sells from inside the market house. She began selling at farmer’s markets around Cincinnati and approached Findlay Market management to sell at their farmer’s market. They lacked a space for her but invited her to sell at Dirt: A Modern Market, a food consignment store at Findlay Market, instead. A few months later, a full- time bread maker left the market, and the market management offered to sell the stand to her. She began selling bread as a cottage producer twenty-four years ago, but at the time of the interview, she had a stand at Findlay Market for five months and was the newest vendor to sell at the market. She sells bread, cookies, cold beverages, and sandwiches. Before she started selling at Findlay Market, she worked in her father’s business. • Alex Manosakis, olive oil, sells from inside the market house. Alex sells Greek olive oil produced in his ancestral village and Italian balsamic vinegar. He began selling at the farmer’s market in 2011 and opened a stand in the market in 2013. He was previously an Army medic and holds an LPN certification.

Aside from the farmers and Richard George (the legacy vendor), all of the participants had careers in other fields before deciding to start a business at Findlay

Market. Some of the vendors fell into their new career by accident. Ean Lehrer’s

business started as a hobby. He always loved cooking and started experimenting with smoked meats. After receiving glowing feedback from friends and family, he started looking for opportunities to sell his product. He started with a pop-up9 restaurant at a local farmers’ market, and as his business grew, he started running a second pop-up at

Findlay Market on the weekends. In this case, Lehrer would set up under a tent where he would assemble sandwiches with the meats he had smoked off-site. Recognizing his success, the market offered him a permanent location in one of the newly renovated storefronts. Lisa Hartzel began her business a part-time cottage producer twenty-four years ago using a sourdough starter that she had inherited from her mother. Her business was successful, but she took a multi-year hiatus to help run her father’s company. After leaving her father’s company, she decided to start making bread again. She explains, “So

I came down here [to the market], and I’m like, I want to sell my bread here, thinking I would just get a farm shed spot. Never, ever imagined that I would be inside of the building because there’s never anything available, ever.” Initially, they did not have a space for her so the market management invited her to sell her bread on consignment at

Dirt: A Modern Market. She explains: “so I started selling my bread at Dirt, and I’m like, can I sample my bread? They’re like, it’s February. I said, ‘that’s ok, I’ll just stand outside with a table and sample my bread and pull traffic into your store and you can sell more of my bread.’” Impressed by her dedication and the popularity of her bread, they offered to sell her a spot in the market. She was hesitant to accept the offer since she had

9 A pop-up restaurant or “pop-up” is a temporary restaurant that may be set up at festivals, farmers’ markets, or vacant restaurant spaces. 64

limited experience operating a retail business, but she also knew how rare it was for a space to become available in the market house. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity, so she took it. She hired employees with experience working in the restaurant industry, including one of the former employees of the stand she now owns. It was a steep learning curve, but her business has been booming since it opened.

Success at the Market

Vendors utilize a variety of strategies to build their social identity and success.

Vendors cultivate their social being and success by creating a stall that customers want to visit. Four of the eleven vendors interviewed for this project spoke about how they worked to cultivate a recognizable brand. For Jay Ward, his brand is his own mustachioed caricature on every bag of spice he sells, and for Amy Wald, it is a tree logo that is reminiscent of her last name. Pierce Hill approached a graphic designer to help create the brand for his bean-to-bar chocolate company, and they collaborated on the logo, wrapper, and even the décor of his shop. As cheese vendor Don Kase says, “You can’t be a success unless they remember you. If they can’t remember you, they can’t find you in the market. They won’t find you online or look for you elsewhere.”

Mark Hall, a produce vendor, deemphasizes the importance of branding, stating that “Branding is less important” than the quality of the product. “The product should stand on its own.” However, Hall is not averse to creating a story around his products.

When the MLB All-Star Game was in Cincinnati in 2015, he renamed one of his products

to capitalize on the excitement around the event. The product, a round zucchini about the size of a baseball, had lackluster sales until “out of boredom and desperation” Hall renamed them All-Star Zucchinis. It took a few weeks, but they caught on with the public and ended up selling very well.

Trust is also an important factor in building economic relationships with customers (Putnam 1995; Guenzi et al 2016; Akrout et al. 2016). Three vendors mentioned building trust as part of their key to success. Mark Hall produces crops for

Kennywood Farms primarily on his suburban farm in northern Kentucky; however, he also produces some crops on an urban lot in Cincinnati. He is not certified organic, but his regulars know that he farms according to organic guidelines. They trust him not to sell them something they do not want. “A subset of my regulars know that I know enough about them to know that they don’t want to buy stuff that was grown at the urban lot as much as at [my farm]. And that I’ll make it clear. […] I know enough of their story to know what matters to them.” Richard George similarly holds trust in great esteem. If a product is not up to his standards, he will warn his customers: “I’m generous to a fault. I’m not out to screw them. I think that shows to my customers because I’m not out to screw them. I’m not out to make more money on them than I should. I’m not trying to find a way to swindle them. They get more than they paid for at my stand, they don’t get less than they paid for.”

At Findlay Market today, there are goods available for virtually every level of economic status; however, individuals in the higher economic tiers of society are able to purchase goods which are viewed as superior and are therefore more expensive, such as

organic produce or sustainably farmed meats. Because these products command a higher price, there is an incentive for vendors to offer these products. It is rare for a farmer to lie about the origins of his products in the farm shed at Findlay Market; nonetheless, it is not unprecedented. In 2011, Market Manager Jennifer Hertwig noticed that one of the farmers in the farm shed was bringing more produce every weekend. This is not uncommon as production tends to increase as the summer progresses; nonetheless, she suspected that the amount of product he was bringing surpassed the capacity of his land.

Then she began to hear rumors that the farmer was purchasing produce at an auction and selling it as his own. The next week she caught the farmer buying produce at an auction.

“I watched him purchase it all, and when he was loading it up on his truck, I approached him and said ‘you’re no longer welcome to sell in the farm shed at Findlay Market.

Bring everything you bought and sell it on the street, which is where the resellers sell, but you can no longer sell it in the farm shed.’” The vendor did not return to the market as a reseller or as a producer. He had violated a social contract with the market and with his customers, and rather than explain why his position at the market had shifted, he chose to leave. Financial enticement is strong, and a small subset of vendors may attempt to lie to try to capitalize; however, the social contract is also a force that prevents vendors from straining customer relationships too far. While trust may establish social relationships in the short or long term, in most cases financial success is built upon long-run relationships which are created through the familiarity (Antrosio and Colloredo-Mansfeld 2015).

Charlotte Mathias emphasized treating everyone with respect when I spoke with her. She sees the “richest of the rich and the poorest of the poor” in her store, and she

stresses to her employees and family that everyone deserves to be treated equally. To emphasize her point, she pulled out a newspaper clipping of a quote by her son. He said that the most important thing he learned from his mother was “to others as you would have them do to you. Treating people with respect in stressful situations regarding money, service, or any other issue I deal with in my business on a daily business, helps to preserve the relationship for the long term.” Kenny Mason of Mary Ann’s Produce trains his employees to greet every person who comes into his shop. He has two rules: “You talk to everyone and you smile. You can buy a tomato anywhere. You’re selling personality and creating an atmosphere.” It behooves the vendor to manipulate relationships to help ensure further business with the individual. Even if the vendor does not recognize the customer as a repeat visitor, they may behave in a friendly or familiar manner. In one way or another, all of the vendors in this study attempt to create a rapport with those visiting their business, and making each customer feel valued or special adds value to the transaction. Mintz refers to this building of relationships at the market by the

Hatian term pratik. Pratik “means both buyer and seller emphasizes the reciprocal nature of the relationships” and “the participants are equals for purposes of trade” (Mintz 2011,

3). “In Haiti, one has pratik (ge pratik) and makes pratik (fe pratik). The degree of intimacy and mutual benefit varies, but since the relationships are intended to stabilize and maintain one’s role in distributive activity, they are always built up over time and have economic value for the participants. As such, pratik ties add to the regularity and patterning of internal marketing activity” (ibid 4). The customer may not only return for

repeat business, but they may also tell other people about their experience at the market which will ideally increase business for the vendor. As Richard George discussed:

It’s like going to church. We get other people, but I’ve got a real solid core of regular customers who shop at the stand, and that’s because they’re used to seeing me behind the counter. It all goes back to names on the door. They’re used to seeing me. They’re used to seeing the people behind the counter and you know… My stand reflects me. I mean, I’m a light heart. I’m an easy guy to get along with. I like to laugh. I like to cut up. We know our customers, and my customers give me shit just like I give them shit. They’ve all seen me getting married and divorced a couple times. There’s a group of people that have been part of that business their entire life, one way or another.

There is a performative aspect to selling at the market. Being welcoming to potential customers regardless of socioeconomics, race, ethnicity, gender, or dress is part of that performance. This performance is part of how vendors build long-term relationships with customers. “To perform is to behave” (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1999, 1).

This behavior is part of the everyday interactions at the market. “Whether a matter of habit, custom, or law, the divine etiquette of ritual, codifications of social grace, the laws governing cabarets and liquor licenses, or the health and sanitation codes, performance encompasses the social practices that are part and parcel of what Pierre Bourdieu calls habitus” (ibid 1-2). Vendors are expected to treat customers in a convivial manner. The relationships built between customers and vendors are generally not as deep as those with friends and family, but some vendors do cultivate deep, lasting relationships with customers. Richard George, Kenny Mason, and Jennifer Hertwig regularly socialize with

some of their regular customers outside of the market, and Richard George and Jennifer

Hertwig invited some of these customers-cum-friends to parties at their homes.

Vendors are also expected to provide a sanitary environment for their wares. They follow the local and state laws regarding the sale of food, and they are expected to make their businesses attractive to customers. There is an adage among vendors, “Pile it high, watch it fly.” In other words, “Nobody wants to buy the last of something” (George, personal interview). Vendors go to great lengths to make their stands and stalls look full of product. Richard George has a thousand silver boxes which he uses to make his stand look full. If he only has one piece of cheese left, he puts two boxes under it to make it look like there is more cheese. “To perform is to show. When doing and behaving are displayed, when they are shown, when participants are invited to exercise discernment, evaluation and appreciation, food events move towards the theatrical and, more specifically, towards the spectacular” (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett 1999, 2). Vendors create layers and texture at their stands, stalls, and shops. They create an aesthetic. They are conscious of how their products look from the other side of the stand.

Understanding success is critical in understanding how community members negotiate and master their environments (Romney, et. al. 1979). Success has two major dimensions according to vendors. The first dimension is obvious: vendors want to make money. Don Kase defines success by the number of units sold. Alex Manosakis and Ean

Lehrer define success as growth. Amy Wald defines success by her ability to be self- sufficient; she wants to support herself through the products she grows on her farm. The other dimension of success as defined by vendors is impact. Of the vendors interviewed,

all but three spoke about their personal success transferring to others in their sphere.

Mark Hall explains: “One way I define [success] is ‘am I meeting the needs of my interns? Are they getting what they need to advance their understanding? Economics sort of matters. I’m sort of competitive. As a business you have to be there.” Pierce Hill’s definition of success extends to his workers: “Success is also measured by my employees.

That they are able to have good, meaningful, full-time work in a good work environment.

One that’s fun, that pays as good or better than anything else they can get in a cool location. And success means that financially we’re able to pay our bills and to have enough money to grow the business. We’re two years in, and by most metrics we’ve done well.” Hertzel’s success means that she is able to be the impetus of success for those around her.

So, I think I’m successful. We’ll see. I mean, I’m making money. I’m paying employees. I don’t know why that’s so emotional. It is though. So, I have an employee… one of my employees is a convicted felon, and that person has children, and when I started here, she was here already working for the Bean Haus, and her sister had just gone downhill really fast. She had two kids and [my employee] had three kids, so five children living in a one-bedroom apartment when I met her. She’s working for me, and I don’t know if it’s going to work out. You know, I don’t know. I kept working with her, and my husband [a realtor and house flipper] was like, she needs a different place to live. She cannot live like this. And we have all these different houses. So we start working with her, and we changed her life. We found a house for her. He got all the renovations donated. She’s in a three-bedroom house now. They have a backyard for the dog. They’re in a safe area. They can walk to school. There’s a park. You know, he taught her how to go through bankruptcy court, so… we changed her life.

Being a positive force in the world is important to many of the vendors. Ean Lehrer donates about $30,000 in sandwiches to community organizations, charity events, and community clean-ups. He believes that this charity enhances his success because he is able to support the community while also promoting his business.

Image 8: Two Vendors in the Farm Shed Chat During a Lull in Customers Vendors as Community

Findlay Market is not perfectly competitive. Platter (1982) explains, “a market is perfectly competitive if it has numerous, relatively small, economizing, freely mobile, knowledgeable sellers and buyers, and homogenous products so that buyers are indifferent about whom they buy an item from” (Plattner 1982: 399). While the market does fulfill the first half of the definition, most of the vendors at the market are not selling

identical products. There are a few vendors who sell produce and a few who sell meats and cheeses; however, this is a far cry from what Plattner was describing at Soulard

Market where entire wings of the market were devoted to produce vendors. This creates an atmosphere where there is less direct competition and more opportunity for camaraderie. Each vendor has at least a few people who they can rely on to watch their stall when they have to take a bathroom break, who they can borrow some quarters from, who they can trade with, or who they can ask to hire a family member. Five of the vendors interviewed for this project described the market as a family, and although three of those five did include the word “dysfunctional” in their description, they still saw the market as a family.

Vendors often respect and learn from each other. Many of the legacy vendors trained not only with their parents but with other vendors at the market. Richard George explained that he worked behind most of the stands at the market before he took over the business for his father in 1981. He learned how to set up his stand by watching what others did and by following the advice of his mentor. He learned that he had to make the case look full, and that everything needed to be clearly labeled with a name and a price.

He has a “spidey-sense” for when something hasn’t sold for a while and knows that he can subliminally influence shoppers just by taking out a product and rewrapping it. He spoke fondly of the time before the 2006 renovations when the market was an “old family” and he could walk behind any stand to get what he needed. Today, he has only one vendor with whom he has this type of reciprocal relationship. Nonetheless, he still has a good reputation in the market house. He is respected, and often new vendors, like

Lisa Hartzel, will defer to his expertise. He believes that what is good for the market is good for everyone. This is not to say that there is not competition. There is often in- fighting between vendors when one believes that another infringed on their territory, and friendships may be destroyed when a vendor feels slighted by another. For years, there was only one vendor who sold olives at the market, but when a second vendor decided to begin selling olives at his stand, it created a rift between these two old friends who had grown up at the market together. Even years later, the affronted party refuses to speak to his former colleague.

Challenges at the Market

There are challenges to operating a business at Findlay Market. One challenge that was mentioned by half of interview participants is seasonality. Summer is the most profitable time to sell at the market. There are events at the market which attract additional visitors as well as a popular farmer’s market. The weather is warm, so customers do not have to brave frigid temperatures and inclement weather as they travel from their cars to the market house and its neighboring buildings. A decline in customers in the winter is a known factor, so a successful vendor has to plan for the seasonal shifts.

These shifts are especially apparent with a product like chocolate, so Pierce Hill creates products that change through the seasons in order to attract customers.

We do change as seasons change, but I would say our product mix changes more due to holidays. Chocolate tends to be a big gift item, so we tend to do very well the Thanksgiving, Christmas. Valentine’s week we sold something like 2000 truffles, and a normal week we sell 74

200. So, Easter is a big day for us, Mother’s Day, and then summer there’s no real holiday. Nobody gives chocolate for Fourth of July. Which is why we have to say ‘how do we change our product mix to be able to get people to come in?’ because their first reaction is to go “chocolate’s just going to melt. I’m not going to come in.” So creating frozen hot chocolates was one of our solutions to that.

He also changes the flavors of his truffles to suit seasonal tastes. In summer, he produces more products with white chocolate which pairs well with lighter wines, fall brings pumpkin spice, and mint chocolate is popular at Christmas. “A big part of serving customers is figuring out what customers are interested in and then providing something on that theme.” In order to ensure that his customers know about these seasonal products, he utilizes social media to entice customers to the market.

Financial challenges abound. Along with failing to plan and accommodate for the seasonal fluctuations in business, there is also the issue of temptation. The market is still largely a cash business, and this can entice vendors to dip into business funds for personal use.

When you own a small business, when you own a cash business […] You have to be able to not spend the cash. You know. You have to be disciplined. I call it the pile theory. This pile is personal money, this pile is business money, this pile is savings money, this pile is fun money. Put some in each pile each week, and they don’t mix. You can’t take personal money and mix it with the business money. I’ve been lucky that my business has been good enough that I can keep those two piles separate. […] It’s a discipline to be able to do the work that you have to do to keep it going. […] It’s about being disciplined enough to do the homework. Every week I have to do paperwork. The only way that I get a vacation is to close the shop down for a week. […] That’s what defines success down there.

Is everybody you’re gonna pay, you gotta do the homework. You’ve got to be disciplined enough to not spend the wrong money in the wrong place. […] It’s hard in a cash business, especially in a cash business that’s this close. I understand how sometimes you have to do that. The minute you can separate them, you have to. I’ve been lucky enough that I’ve never had to dip too far into the personal pile to make the business go. What happens is people dig into the business to make the personal go. That’s when the business goes south (Richard George, personal interview).

Every change at the market brings its own risks and uncertainty. “In risky situations, decision makers can estimate the probabilities of different outcomes resulting from particular decisions. In uncertain situations, decision makes have no idea what the probabilities are of different outcomes. In the real world, however, most decisions- making situations combine elements of risk and uncertainty” (Chibnik 2011, 61).

Vendors negotiate risks with every decision they make. If a vendor chooses to expand a product line, they must discontinue selling other products to make space. If a vendor chooses to invest in a new piece of equipment, they have to make sure that they have money in the budget during the lean months to repay loans. Every year Richard George takes what he calls an “$8000 gamble.” He purchases $8000 in cheddar cheese, which he seasons and ages for a year and a half and sells as Christmas Cheddar. His regular customers wait all year for this special cheese, and if it is a good year for the Christmas

Cheddar, it will sell out in a few weeks. If it is a bad year, the cheese sits in his case until

April and he has to sell it below cost. Some customers will buy the cheese regardless of its quality, but he never lies to his customers. If the cheese is not good, he will tell them.

This honesty serves him well, and he has experienced double-digit growth for seven years straight.

Another challenge that vendors face is the changing customer base at the market.

Failing to adjust and adapt can spell doom for a vendor. As the neighborhood gentrifies and urban professionals take the place of poor African Americans, customers are demanding different products. Kenny Mason explains:

It’s becoming more, I don’t want to use the word elitist – more gourmet. […] The people who are cooking are cooking fancier dishes. For instance, three years ago, at Thanksgiving, I sold 300 cases of collard greens. Just collard greens in one week. […] Bags of potatoes. Bags of onions. Specifically, black poor people bought all that stuff because they cooked huge meals for thanksgiving and Christmas, now we don’t do that anymore. I mean, I’ll sell during the week, I might sell one or two- one case of collard greens. Thanksgiving, I might sell 20 collard greens, but not 300. […] A lot of urban professionals don’t cook. But when they do cook, they want special stuff. They don’t want mashed potatoes, they want the creamers, and they want the ginger and the herbs. They want to make their own pesto. Avocados, they’ll make their own guacamole. We sell, on the weekends, we’ll sell tons of avocados and cilantro. They’re making guacamole. And mushrooms, that kind of thing. But a poor black person who lived down here wouldn’t know what to do with a shitake. They don’t do that. That wasn’t their food. They wanted turkey necks and collard greens. So it’s a cultural shift in the food that’s being bought. This means that vendors must stay informed about changes in their industry. They must be receptive to changes and willing to listen to customer suggestions. They cannot be stuck in the past because as the customers and market change they must change with it.

Vendors at the market vary in their definitions of success; however, as they navigate the challenges and mitigate their risks, they build strategies that align with their personal philosophies. The way the vendors use the market as social infrastructure helps to define whether or not their business thrives or fails. They have to adjust to compensate for changes in customer demographics so they can continue to serve the people who are at the market instead of the people who were at the market a decade or two decades ago.

Chapter 4: Food Security and the Market

This place didn’t suffer the way other parts of the neighborhood did. People have an attachment to this place. It’s that public thing. It belongs to us. You can say, well, the stadium belongs to us, but 3/4th of the people can’t afford to go there to a game. They’re never going to see the inside of it, and it’s helping a select few people get rich, but you know this place, on a busy weekend, there’s over [300] people here working. It’s a livelihood for a lot of families. It’s a great story. Michelle Calvo, Resource Development Director and Director of Communications

Public markets are part of the social infrastructure of a city, and they can affect the perception of food security and insecurity. Historically, access to public markets in the United States was determined by social standing. The richest customers had first access followed by the middle class, and the poorer classes. By ten or eleven o’clock in the morning, the poorest members of society were allowed to pick through the day’s battered leftovers which merchants sold for very little or nothing (Mayo 1991). While this differential access did perpetuate a system of class stratification, it did, however, provide people who were food insecure the ability to access fresh meat and produce that they might not otherwise have access to.

Image 9: Produce Resellers at Findlay Market

This tradition persists in many public markets around the globe. In Porta Palazzo in Italy and markets in France, the cities’ poor, disabled, and elderly scour the trash left behind by the markets to collect edible leftovers in a practice called “gleaning” (The

Gleaners and I 2000; Black 2012). Black (2012) recounts her first experience seeing an elderly woman gleaning at the market:

I am not sure why I had never noticed the mounds of garbage that piled up at the fringes of the area with the market stalls in the large resellers’ market, but that day I took note. An elderly woman bundled up for the cold weather sifted through the discarded vegetables […] The vendor told me that they all knew the old people who came to collect the refuse. They turned a blind eye and made sure there was something edible for these people to pick up. The vendors wanted these hungry people to have some dignity (Black 2012: 87).

She goes on to explain that food insecurity among the elderly is a huge issue in Italy, and even though it is seen as socially acceptable to glean at the market, the vendors turn a blind eye to the practice. Not all of the refuse at the market is inedible, and much of the produce is perfectly fit for consumption once it has been washed (Black 2012). In this sense, gleaning helps to maximize crop yield by reducing food waste, and it provides an important food source to those who so desperately need it.

Similar practices occur to a lesser extent at public markets and farmer’s markets in the United States. Food Forward, an organization in California which strives to reduce urban hunger by “rescuing” produce that would otherwise go to waste, began an initiative called The Farmers Market Recovery Program. This initiative recruits gleaners to visit farmers markets at the end of the selling day to collect produce that would otherwise go to waste. This produce is then donated to agencies serving those in need (“Join the

Farmers Market Recovery Glean Team!” 2012).

During visits to West Side Market in Cleveland and Soulard Market in St. Louis, I noticed that near the end of the day produce vendors will sell their products at a significantly discounted rate. At West Side Market, mangoes which were being sold for

$1.50 each at the beginning of the day were being sold for $5 a case at the end of the day.

A friend who could not resist the bargain bought a whole case. These mangoes had been sitting in the hot produce shed for much of the day and many of them looked spoiled and over-ripe, but for a person with a freezer, a couple cases of cheap fruit or vegetables can provide sustenance for weeks. At Soulard Market, I also witnessed people rescuing bruised and damaged fruit from the dumpsters and a man convincing a vendor to give

him a recently broken but otherwise clean watermelon. While dumpster diving and soliciting vendors for free food is generally frowned upon at markets, most of the vendors turn a blind eye to the practice.

Image 10: The Findlay Market Farm Shed. A Sign Reads: "Weekends April- November - Food Stamps Accepted" Many public markets and some farmer’s markets also accept Supplemental

Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, aka Food Stamps)10 benefits which can improve access to healthy produce for low income families. The USDA reports that there are

2550 farmer’s markets and public markets in the United States registered to accept EBT,

10 SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is a program that provides nutrition benefits to supplement the food budget of needy families. Colloquially referred to by the anachronist term “food stamps,” benefits are received on a plastic Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) debit card (“USDA Food and Nutrition Service 2019).

and Findlay Market is one of them. The process for using EBT cards at farmer’s markets can be rather difficult since many of the individual vendors do not have the equipment to accept the cards. At Findlay Market (and other markets such as Pearl Street Farmers

Market in Columbus), food stamp shoppers visit a centralized location at the market and use their EBT card to purchase tokens which can be used at the vendors’ tables. Findlay

Market also participates in Produce Perks which can further provide support to food insecure families. Produce Perks (PP) is a program designed to improve access to fresh fruits and vegetables to individuals and families enrolled in the. A customer who wishes to use their SNAP benefits in the farm shed at Findlay Market, or one of the other participating farmer’s markets, swipes their card at the information stand and withdraws a desired amount. They receive one gold token and one green token for each dollar they withdraw. Each token is worth a dollar at a vendor’s stand. “The incentive is a dollar- for-dollar match to every dollar spent (up to $10)” when using an EBT card at the market,” so these customers are doubling their spending money by participating in the program (Produce Perks 2019). The tokens do not expire and can be used at any of the eight farmer’s markets in the Cincinnati area. The green tokens can only be used on fruits and vegetables, but the gold tokens can be used on any eligible items at the farmer’s market. Throughout the market day, the Market Manager periodically collects coins from the vendors, taking careful note of how many coins were collected. At the end of the month, the vendors are reimbursed for the Produce Perks transactions. There are three major benefits to this program: A) it increases affordability of healthy foods for low-income populations, B) the program increases the customer base for vendors at the

farmer’s market, and C) the money goes directly to the local economy (Freedman, et al

2016).

All customers are welcome at the market, regardless of socio-economic status, which creates a different kind of security for SNAP customers: freedom from judgement.

In 1995, as much as 75% of the business at Findlay Market came from food stamp purchases (Barrett 1995, 4A), and while that percentage has decreased in the past twenty years, vendors are still conscious of this segment of their customer base. Lisa Hartzel already accepts SNAP but is working to get her approval for WIC11, Alex Manosakis automatically deducts $1 from the price of his olive oil for anyone using a EBT card,

Charlotte Mathias trades bags of potatoes for copies of Street Vibes12, and Kenny Mason offers a free bag of onions or potatoes for every $10 purchase. These vendors feel a social responsibility to serve all of their customers, and offer assistance to those who are less able to pay. SNAP customers appreciate that they are not being judged for utilizing their EBT cards in the market house, but some feel uncomfortable using the Produce

Perks coins in the farm shed. During one of my participant observations, thirteen people used their EBT cards for the Produce Perks program. All of these customers, including five who had previously utilized the PP program at Findlay Market, reported that they were happy with their experience and would probably return, but the Market Manager recalls one person earlier in the summer who returned most of her coins unspent. The

Market Manager tried to explain to the woman that she could use the coins at other

11 WIC is a special supplemental nutrition program for Women, Infants, and Children 12 A newspaper created by and sold by housing insecure people in Cincinnati 84

farmers’ markets, but the woman explained that she felt uncomfortable interacting with the vendors and paying with coins that marked her as different from other shoppers.

In addition to programs like Produce Perks, some public markets and farmer’s markets can affect policy by advocating for additional farmer’s markets in economically depressed neighborhoods. Low income neighborhoods often have inadequate access to supermarkets which may be barrier acquiring fresh meats, fruits, and vegetables. Using census data for 28,050 ZIP codes in the United States, Powell et al (2007b) mapped access to food stores including chain supermarkets, non-chain supermarkets, and grocery stores. They found that low-income neighborhoods had 25% fewer chain supermarkets than middle-income neighborhoods. The difference is even more noteworthy in African

American neighborhoods which had 48% fewer chain supermarkets (Powell, et. al.

2007a, 192). Since building a new grocery store involves substantial financial investment, it may be unfeasible to build a grocery store in some food deserts. Farmers’ markets can provide a solution to this issue. East New York (in Brooklyn, NY) has limited access to fresh produce because few large grocery stores operate in the area. In the 1990s, local community organizers formed a coalition of local urban gardeners and community members to build a new farmers market in East New York. Since its inception in 1998, East New York Farms has been thriving and providing food security to the neighborhood. According to a report from the Project for Public Spaces, in 2003 about 80% of sales at the market are through WIC and senior coupons via the Farmers

Market Nutrition Program (“Public Markets as a Vehicle” 2003). According to the

USDA, they also accept SNAP benefits (“USDA Food and Nutrition Service” 2019).

Likewise, Findlay Market participates in farmer’s markets on weekdays in order to increase its reach in poor neighborhoods.

Some public markets are not well poised to reduce food insecurity in their neighborhoods. West Side Market does not accept food stamps, and while North Market in Columbus does, their prices are higher than produce at chain grocery stores, especially in the winter. This means that the same $10 from SNAP will not have the same buying power at Findlay Market and North Market, but ultimately, it does not need to. Findlay

Market is in an economically depressed, largely residential area. North Market is within blocks of a thriving middle-class neighborhood, a hockey arena, a convention center, a baseball field, multiple hotels, and numerous office buildings. North Market is a locus of productive leisure (Beiswenger and Cohen 2017). Findlay Market is a locus of provisioning.

Jay Ward, president of the Findlay Market Business Association, explained that

Findlay Market is ideal for people on a low income. Not only do they accept SNAP, but they also have a wide range of options for people of varying income levels, including more expensive organic and less expensive conventionally produced products. His stall,

Gourmet Herbs and Spices, is also ideal for people with limited expendable income. He explained that as long as a quantity of spice can register on the scale, he will sell it. “We do serve some of the customers that my meat neighbor serves, but we take their precious pennies, and so it’s interesting on a Saturday, the matron will come up and say, give me, oh I don’t know, six ounces, eight ounces, I don’t care, and then the person behind them comes up and goes, I’ve got 54 cents, and you vend as close as you can to 54 cents to that

person because that’s what they can afford.” Herbs and spices sold at his stall are ineligible for SNAP, so he occasionally gets customers with only a few cents to spend.

Ounce for ounce his spices are cheaper and fresher than those at the grocery store, and since he can sell them in smaller quantities, he can help even the poorest individual add a little spice to their food. This can help improve the subjective quality of food because a little spice can add variation to the available food. Findlay Market also sells cheap off- cuts of meat that may not be available at traditional grocery stores. This may also give food insecure people an opportunity to broaden their diet without spending a lot of money.

Public markets have the potential to alleviate food insecurity, but this ultimately depends on the social construction of the market. Location is also an important factor.

The neighborhoods which house North Market in Columbus and Findlay Market in

Cincinnati are very different. Findlay Market is in an economically depressed area.

North Market is not. Both markets attract visitors from outside of their neighborhoods, but Findlay Market’s vendors are acutely aware of the financial constraints of many of their customers, and this awareness influences what they choose to sell and for what price.

Chapter 5: The Social Life of the Market

Old friends and new friends see each other down here and on a busy Saturday, you know that they’re looking for each other and they finally see each other you see like a hug. And it’s, everybody either meets their new friend here or is meeting up with an old friend. And this is sometimes their ritual. They come down here with their neighbors. A couple customers come down here with their father-in-laws or their neighbors next door to each other. They share that ride. That’s what Findlay Market is. It’s diversity and bringing people together around food, and that’s why I like it. Jennifer Hertwig, Market Manager

Over the centuries since public markets first began in the United States, the social dynamics of public markets have changed significantly. While early public markets were marked by social differentiation and class division, most contemporary markets are spaces where customers of diverse backgrounds are welcome in this pleasant and hospitable place. The contemporary market is a place where citizens can meet, protest, perform, celebrate, and shop. It is social infrastructure. “People forge bonds in places that have healthy social infrastructures – not because they set out to build community, but because when people engage in sustained, recurrent interaction, particularly while doing things they enjoy, relationships inevitably grow (Klinenberg 2018, 5). It is through its role as social infrastructure that Findlay Market builds community.

Findlay Market hosts a variety of social events including an Art and Poetry

Competitions, date nights, yoga, Oktoberfest, Taste of Findlay Market, and Mardi Gras at

the Market. One of the biggest social events at Findlay Market is the Findlay Market

Opening Day Parade to celebrate the start of the Cincinnati Reds’ season. This tradition, originating in 1919, draws enormous crowds to the city as the parade wends its way from the market to the baseball field. In 2019, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the parade, spectators clad in their finest red apparel were greeted by 18 high school marching bands, mascots from nine Catholic high schools, Clydesdale horses, and numerous floats

(Thompson 2019). These events are not just methods of economically enriching the market; they bring people together from all over the city to build community.

“Community is not just a place, although place is very important, but a series of day-today, ongoing, often invisible practices. These practices are connected but not confined to place” (Halperin 1998, 5). As Jennifer Hertwig explained when asked to describe

Findlay Market from her perspective:

I’ll tell a story. One of my first years working as an employee down here was… we opened at 7:00 in the morning, and you have your regular customers. And every morning, almost on que, you have a woman selling Street Vibes, which is the homeless newspaper, and you had another gentleman come in and we found out he was a doctor. […] Usually he was just coming off his shift. He was a doctor, and then you had the woman who was a Street Vibes vendor, selling the homeless paper, not necessarily homeless, but in between that transitional stage, and he would come and they would chat in front of the stand while we were getting their orders together every Saturday morning. One Saturday, the woman wasn’t there. And the doctor said, “Do you know what happened to [Susan]?” And we said, no I haven’t seen her today. Oh if she comes by, let her know I said hello. Second week comes by, and Susan still didn’t show up. So the doctor said, “Hey, do you know? Is she here? Have you heard from her? […] Ok, well, I’m not going to be here. I’m going to be out of town the next couple weeks, so if you see her tell her so.” The next week came. The third week, and of course the doctor wasn’t there, but guess who showed up: Susan! And I think we all completely

forgot to tell her. […] The next week comes by the doctor wasn’t there. Susan was there, but the doc wasn’t there. And a whole month has gone by, and they haven’t seen each other. The fifth week comes, and there was the most elated hug I’ve ever seen in front of a stand. Two people from completely two different socioeconomic levels, totally two different backgrounds, but have shared in their families, have shared in their day-to-day lives, have come to basically share recipes and foods from their different cultures and backgrounds with each other in front of the stand. Gave each other a big hug. “Hey, where have you been?” It turns out Susan was sick and the doctor was on vacation and we were silly enough, we didn’t tell Susan about the vacation. That’s why I come down to work every day because that type of experience.

The market is more than just a physical space for economic exchanges. They are social spaces where customers and vendors can form long term social relationships.

According to Karl Polanyi (1957), the system of exchange typical of most economic exchanges in Western societies eschews long-term relationships between the vendor and the customer instead favoring short-term, impersonal relationships; however, in his discussion of Soulard Market in St. Louis, MO, Stuart Plattner (1982; 1989A) argues against this idea and instead explores the reasons why some customers and vendors aim to establish long-term, reciprocal economic relationships in some situations while avoiding them in other situations.

Short-run exchanges tend to be impersonal because there is no economic advantage in having a relationship between the parties involved in a transaction with few implications for the future. These transactions are generally closed-ended (Plattner

1989A). For example, at a regular grocery store, I have no vested interest in a lasting relationship because I will most likely never see my cashier again and thus the transaction

is completed when I pay my bill and receive my goods. The public market, however, attempts to create a different, less impersonal atmosphere. Even if a customer is a first time buyer, the vendors often engage them in conversation and often offer advice to the customer. This more personal relationship may not be as strong as those shared between friends or family members, but the relationships forged between customers and vendors at public markets aim to establish long-run economic relationships which tend to increase customer satisfaction and create the potential for future transactions. This is certainly the case at Findlay Market.

Shopping at Findlay Market is a different experience than shopping at a typical grocery store.

• First, vendors and customers engage with each other. They share knowledge. They engage at a social level and that rapport creates the social universe. • Second, vendors will often recognize their regular customers and follow up on previous conversations thus building long-term relationships (Beiswenger and Cohen 2017; Antrosio and Colloredo-Mansfeld 2015; Shepherd 2008) • Third, these social relationships are going beyond customer/vendor. The market creates a framework for building social relationships where agents can build rapport. • Fourth, it provides a locus for vendors to build relationships with one another. “Selling at the market as being like part of a ‘big family’ that tends to teach, learn from, and look out for one another” (“Public Markets as a Vehicle for Social Integration and Upward Mobility.” 2003: 14).

As I distributed surveys at Findlay Market, many of the customers would proudly state how long they had been visiting the market, including one 80-year-old man who had been regularly visiting the market since he was a child. Regular visitors are happy to proclaim which vendors they frequent, and some have built valuable relationships with

their favorite vendors over the years. Charlotte Mathias, a produce and dry goods vendor, reports that she has been at the market so long that she has seen children of her customers grow up. She recognizes these adult children and will inquire after their parents. She has a wall behind her cash register that is covered in cards, birth announcements, graduation announcements, and photographs from customers. At

Findlay Market, the atmosphere of conviviality between vendors benefits the customers.

If one vendor does not carry a product, he or she will direct customers to another vendor who may be able to help. This warmth and helpfulness further creates an atmosphere that cements public markets as social spaces. All participants know what the market means, though they seldom agree with one another, or even with themselves from day to day. It is a complicated environment, but it is an intricate cultural environment filled with cultural heritage. Meanings are attached to the physical space along with the dimensions of cuisine, nostalgia, and infrastructure (Bestor 2004).

Stuart Plattner found that vendors at Soulard Market in St. Louis, MO often chose to maintain long-run relationships over short-term profits (Plattner 1982). In his study, he found that many vendors would stock products with lower profit margins in order to satisfy the demands of their regular customers. Since there is limited available space in market stalls, this meant that they could not stock as many of the more profitable items.

While this meant that vendors could not maximize their profits, it did help to maintain long-term relationships. This emphasis on building long-run relationships makes shopping at a public market more similar to shopping at the peasant market places described by Mintz (1989) and Plattner (1989b) than it is similar to shopping at a large-

scale grocery chain or the local mall. Mintz calls this building of exchange relationships the emergence of pratik (2011), a buying and selling relationship typified in the markets of Haiti.

Image 11: A Child Riding a Coin-Operated Mechanical Horse Outside of One of the Businesses at Findlay Market

Additionally, public markets fulfill other needs of the customers. They can provide a location for socialization. Office workers from nearby visit the market to eat lunch together on weekdays, and this visit provides them with a place where they could escape from the drudgery of the work day and just socialize. They are provisioning by fulfilling a biological need, but they are also practicing productive leisure as they fulfill a social need. Furthermore, Findlay Market is crowded with families on the weekends. It is an ideal location for family trips because it is safe and there are a wide range of eateries

which can satisfy a variety of tastes. On one of my visits to Findlay Market in 2014, I spent an hour sitting inside the market building observing customers. In the building there is a small seating area where visitors can eat and talk. At one point, I noticed two women walking through the market building. Both women were pushing strollers, and one of the women was holding the hand of a toddler. As they approached the seating area, they negotiated which woman was going to watch the children and who was going to order food first. The woman who had been holding the toddler’s hand was selected to go order food first. She went up to the counter, ordered, received her food, resumed her place in the seating area, and then watched the children as her comrade ordered her own food. This incident illustrates the role of Findlay Market as a both a social space and an economic one. It enabled two young mothers to get some air, socialize, eat, and purchase items for household use. This communal meal also provided an important opportunity for these women to reinforce their shared social identity and reinforce bonds. This is not an isolated incident. This type of interaction is enacted repeatedly every day at the market as the market brings neighborly values to a marketplace environment (Bubinas

2011; Anderson 2004).

Image 12: The Findlay Market Biergarten, Open Six Days per Week May- October

The primary function of a public market is to create a locus for economic activity and trade; however, “it plays a crucial and simultaneous role in presenting the residents’ life and culture” (Silkes 2012, 327). Public markets connect visitors, vendors, and the local food and culture of a region (Silkes 2012; Smith and Xiao 2008); however, the goals of individual public markets can vary considerably. Findlay Market is part of the social infrastructure of Cincinnati. It provides food security and community. It is creating Cincinnati. North Market is different. Like Findlay Market, it has social events and sells food, but it is not as socio-economically diverse as Findlay. Whereas the least expensive products at Findlay Market are on par with the prices at Walmart and Kroger;

North Market is more expensive than other grocery stores, including Whole Foods

(Beiswenger and Cohen 2017). North Market, like Findlay Market, has special events, but these events are more product/producer driven than socially driven. For example,

Findlay Market has free bi-monthly tours where customers can gather to learn about the market together, and their Biergarten (open 6 days per week) also provides an opportunity for customers to congregate, sit, and socialize (image 12). North Market’s events are less socially oriented and more about products. The Ohio Wine Festival provides an opportunity for visitors to taste the wines of twenty Ohio producers, but there are few places where visitors can sit to chat while they sip their wines, which limits the opportunity to interact socially with new people. North Market also has a night market on their social schedule with games and family events once a month, but both the night market and Ohio Wine Festival are more oriented towards providing an opportunity for vendors/producers to present their wares than they are for customers to socialize with one another.

Image 13: The Main Page for FindlayMarket.org

Image 14: The Main Page for NorthMarket.com

These differing philosophies of the role of the public market are also apparent on the websites for the markets. Upon visiting http://findlaymarket.org a visitor is greeted by a photograph of the market that is filled with people (image 13). Of the twenty-five pictures on the Findlay Market website, over half have people in them. In some cases, it is only a hand reaching for a leek or someone holding up Produce Perks coins, but most of the pictures are of people walking around the market. Findlay Market’s main website also highlights the upcoming events at the market. It welcomes the viewer into the market, and then tells them what events they could participate in while they are there. By contrast, NorthMarket.com (image 14) is literally impersonal: there are no photographs of people on the website. Upon visiting the main page, the viewer is greeted by a photograph of the front of the market building, but it is absent of people. This photograph is also a view of the market that a casual visitor would not be able to see because it was taken from approximately twenty feet off the ground. It is not an invitation into the welcoming doors of the market. It presents the market as an imposing structure. Below the image is a statement from the main page on the North Market website:

We are butchers, bakers and candy makers. We are fishmongers, greengrocers and restaurateurs. We grow, catch, find, make, produce, distribute, cook, create and invent our wares.

We are Central Ohio’s authentic public market. Since 1876 our merchants, farmers, and makers have loyally served the community and its visitors. We provide an authentic Columbus, Ohio experience that highlights the diversity and vibrancy of our community, both economically and culturally by promoting “best-in-class” local, independent businesses.

North Market is home to dozens of unique, independent merchants, farmers, and makers who deliver personal and personable service every day of the week.

This statement is mostly absent of visitors. There is only one reference to the people who visit North Market; instead, the author chose to focus on the vendors who sell at the market. Findlay Market’s website invites visitors for a social experience by showing the visitors who make the market thrive; North Market invites visitors for an economic experience by listing the types of vendors from whom they can shop.

Findlay Market’s role as social infrastructure has the potential to bridge divisions, alleviate food insecurity, and build community. It is a zone where “anyone could expect civility” even in times when society was strife with ethnic and racial tension (Anderson

2004, 17). People go about their business and greet or assist one another with a civility that is much less common in other public areas. Places such as Findlay Market – are

“neutral social settings, which no one group expressly owns but all are encouraged to share, situated under this kind of protective umbrella, represent a special type of urban space, a peculiar zone that every visitor seems to recognize, appreciate, and enjoy”

(Anderson 2004, 22).

The Future of Findlay Market

I began this dissertation with a discussion of the history of Findlay Market. I am ending with a discussion of the future of Findlay Market. In the past twenty years, the composition of Findlay Market has changed considerably (figure 12). The quantity of permanent vendors increased as the market renovated the buildings surrounding the

market house. The quantity of produce and meat vendors has decreased while the number of prepared food and dessert/snack vendors has increased. As the neighborhood continues to gentrify, these trends will probably continue; however, there are limitations to what will happen to the market in the next five years. Without major renovations, it is unlikely that more prepared food vendors will join those already selling in the market house because additional heat would put strain on the air conditioning and any new prepared food vendors would require the addition of ventilation hoods; however, this does not mean that more prepared food vendors could not become permanent fixtures at the market. As the Corporation for Findlay Market continues to renovate the buildings surrounding the market, it is likely that at least some of those buildings will become restaurants.

Looking twenty years into the future, the destiny of Findlay Market is more uncertain. I have no doubt that the market will still exist, but the composition may shift considerably. Before 2040, the market will be due for another round of updates and renovations. By that time, some of the long-time fixtures at the market - Neil Luken

(Neil Luken Meats), Mike Luken (Luken’s Poultry, Fish, and Seafood), Richard George

(George’s Cheese), and other legacy vendors - will most likely have retired. Some of these vendors have plans in place to continue their business into the next generation, but if their planned successors decide not to continue operating the business, there could be a significant shift in the composition of the market.

Looking at the trajectory of another public market can also shine a light on the future of Findlay Market. Milwaukee Public Market, established in 2005 in Milwaukee’s

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Third Ward, was modeled, in part, after North Market, Findlay Market, and Pike Place

Market. At the time of my visit in 2012, this thriving market had twenty vendors: eight prepared food vendors, six grocery vendors, four sweets/pastry/snack vendors, one fish vendor, and one cheese/sausage vendor. They had no produce vendors. While the market was flourishing in 2012, its early years were not without strife. In 2007, it was within a month of closing as it struggled with high vendor turnover and lack of customers

(Davis 2013). When the market was first established, “Organizers wanted the market to focus on fresh ingredients in the tradition of European markets instead of prepared foods.

But the market’s current leaders and vendors say that model didn’t work. Producers couldn’t make enough margin on their products to pay the rent, and people didn’t respond to the concept” (Davis 2013). In 2007, the owners of the building transferred management of the market to a Historical Third Ward Association and changed the offerings at the market. Ron San Felippo, Chair of the Business Improvement District, explains “Originally they expected the customers to buy what they wanted to sell them

[…] We decided to sell them what they wanted to buy” (qtd. in Davis 2013). Namely, the market added significantly more prepared foods, and that change made a significant difference in the success of the market. According to a 2013 article, vendor space was

100 percent leased and sales grew steadily between 2007 and 2013, reaching $9.75 million 2012 (Davis 2012). In 2013 fresh produce returned to the market when

Commission Row Produce was added to the lineup at the market, and while the vendor was not making money “hand-over-fist” they were paying their bills (Davis 2012).

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As Over-the-Rhine is gentrified, what customers expect of Findlay Market will change. This creates two possible futures for the market: 1) The market will become a food court. The Corporation for Findlay Market will buy-out the legacy meat, poultry, fish, cheese, grocery, and produce vendors and install the infrastructure necessary for more prepared food vendors. A handful of fresh food vendors will remain as a nod to the market’s history, but the market itself will be fundamentally altered. 2) The market will maintain the current number of meat, poultry, fish, cheese, grocery, and produce vendors, but the price-points for those items will increase as the neighborhoods median income shifts. The low-income individuals and families who sustained the market for decades will no longer be able to afford to shop there. Examining the trajectory of the market and the neighborhood, this second option is more likely. The market will remain a cosmopolitan canopy where everyone is welcome, but the market will be intangibly altered.

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