Farmers Market Financial Model

Pilot Season Planning Tool — Interactive Scenario Modeler
⚙ Setup
📈 Model
❓ How to Use
🌿

What does this tool do?

This is a planning calculator for anyone thinking about starting a farmers market. It helps you figure out whether your market can cover its costs — before you commit to anything.

You tell it things like how many vendors you expect, how long your season will be, and what your expenses might look like. It does the math and shows you whether the numbers work — and what you'd need to change if they don't.

Start with the Setup tab to enter your market's basic details. Then move to the Model tab to explore different scenarios. Nothing you enter here is saved or sent anywhere — it's just a calculator.

Your Market Name

Fill in the fields below and your settings will appear here.

🌿 Market Identity

📅 Season Structure

Total Fridays (or other days) in the season
Daily rate per 10×10 space. All tier fees scale from this number.
Non-refundable fee per vendor application
Applied to all booth fees for founding season vendors
Season Summary

🌿 Vendor Variables

Vendors per market day ? 18
Total spaces filled each week
Full season — prepaid (%) ? 50%
Fee: —
Full season — pay-as-you-go (%) ? 20%
Fee: —
Flex / occasional (%) ? 10%
Fee: —/day — bi-weekly gets remainder

💵 Cost Variables

Market manager compensation ? $4,000
Full season compensation — $0 = volunteer model
Site / permit fee ? $0
Venue or parking lot use fee for the season
Insurance & legal ? $400
Liability insurance, nonprofit filing fees
Supplies & infrastructure ? $400
Signage, tables, canopy, setup materials
Marketing & misc ? $200
Printing, social media, promotions, misc
Revenue Detail
TierVendorsFeeRevenue
Total revenue (incl. application fees)
Cost Detail
ItemAmount
Total costs
Fee Structure — How Tiers Are Calculated
Tier How it's calculated Fee (current settings)
All fees scale from the daily anchor rate set in Setup. Change the anchor or number of weeks to see fees update automatically. Founding discount (if set) is applied on top.

What this tool does

This is an interactive financial planning tool for farmers market organizers. It lets you model the economics of a pilot season by adjusting key variables and instantly seeing how they affect revenue, costs, and viability.

It is designed for planning conversations — not accounting. Use it to explore "what if" scenarios, understand the relationship between vendor count and costs, and build a shared understanding of the financial picture with your founding team.

Start in Setup. Enter your market name, season length, and booth anchor rate first. The model uses these to calculate all fee tiers automatically. You can return to Setup at any time to change them.

The Setup tab

Market name & location

Purely for labeling your printouts and shared links. Doesn't affect any calculations.

Number of weeks

The total number of market days in your season. All full-season fees scale proportionally from this number.

Booth anchor rate

Your target per-day, per-booth revenue. All tier fees are calculated as multiples of this number. A $15 anchor on 8 weeks gives a $120 full-season prepaid fee, for example.

Founding vendor discount

An optional discount applied to all booth fees as an incentive for early-commitment vendors. Set to 0% if you're not offering one — it reduces revenue meaningfully at small scale.

The Model tab — vendor variables

Vendors per market day is the most important number in the model. It drives all revenue. The other sliders just determine how those vendors are distributed across tiers.

The four tiers are:

  • Full season prepaid — committed for the whole season, pays upfront. Best revenue and best cash flow.
  • Full season pay-as-you-go — committed for the whole season, pays weekly. Slightly higher total fee to offset cash flow risk.
  • Bi-weekly — attends roughly half the market days, alternating weeks. The remainder after the other three percentages is assigned here automatically.
  • Flex / occasional — no season commitment, pays a day rate. Lowest revenue per vendor but fills gaps.
The percentages don't need to add up to 100% manually — bi-weekly automatically absorbs whatever is left over. If your numbers produce a negative bi-weekly count, reduce flex or pay-as-you-go percentages.

The Model tab — cost variables

  • Market manager compensation — set to $0 to model a fully volunteer-run market. This is typically the largest single cost item and has the most impact on your break-even vendor count.
  • Site / permit fee — any fee charged by the venue or municipality. May be $0 if the space is donated or provided free as part of a community partnership.
  • Insurance & legal — market liability insurance is typically required. Nonprofit formation filing fees (if applicable) also go here.
  • Supplies & infrastructure — physical items: signage, layout markers, tables, tent/canopy, extension cords, etc. This is often underestimated in Year 1.
  • Marketing & misc — printing, social media promotion, event listings, and general operating costs.

Sharing & printing

Share link — the Share button generates a URL that encodes all your current settings. Anyone who opens it sees the same numbers. Use this to share a specific scenario with team members or board members before a meeting.

Scenario name — name your scenario (e.g. "Conservative" or "Base Case") before sharing so the recipient knows what they're looking at.

Print — the Print button generates a clean printable version of the model with the current numbers. Sliders are hidden and the layout is optimized for paper.

Nothing you do here is permanent. Closing the tab resets everything unless you've saved a share link. Share links capture a snapshot — changing the model after sharing doesn't update old links.