By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews
WALDPORT – There’s fettucine and sweet rolls, earrings and wall art, knives and wood furniture, knitted hats and early-season vegetables — just a bit of everything — at the growing Waldport Wednesday Market.
All accompanied by the sound of music wafting over the market from a rotating and expanding list of local performers.
The weekly craft fairs and farmers markets that have sprouted up in most Oregon cities serve lots of purposes. When well done, they serve as a gathering place that helps draw people and their business to downtowns.
But they also serve as incubators for vendors wanting to see if it’s possible to expand their small idea or craft into full-time retail — or just the opposite, people seeking a way out of that daily retail grind. Some vendors are senior citizens looking to make a little cash by selling the fruits of their hobbies or a husband or wife hoping to augment income from work elsewhere.
“Many people use this as a test market to see if they can take the next step,” said TiAnne Rios, secretary of the Beachcomber Days nonprofit which took over management of the Wednesday market four years ago and immediately began re-energizing it.
Rios ticks off the names of five former vendors who have gone on to open shops in Waldport, Seal Rock or Newport – yarn goods, clothing, food, even a psychic reader.
“We’re all for that,” she said during the opening day of the market last week, blessed by good weather, a community center parking lot full of 70 vendors and a steady stream of people stopping by to see what’s new or find something to eat.
Rios and the Beachcomber crew have revitalized the mid-day market and are always looking at ways to adapt, change and accommodate. In addition to a waiting list of vendors, there are more food booths this year and now a volunteer to coordinate musicians wanting to perform.
At the request of some vendors and customers, the market also shifted back an hour, now opening at 10 a.m. and closing at 3 p.m.
For those working folks who can’t break away during the day, Rios and the Beachcomber Days board are working on an idea of an evening market once a month during the summer somewhere else downtown.
And, the market now hosts a rotating list of nonprofits and service organizations ranging from veterans, to the Waldport Library Foundation to a new watershed protection organization who can set up tables to talk to the public about their work. They get a space for free.
“We’re here as a service, not to make money off them,” Rios said.
Regular booth fees are moderate — $25 to register and then $15 a week to participate. The money goes for market operations, Rios said, and then to support Beachcomber Days’ other activities, especially its big celebration over Father’s Day weekend in June.
What won’t change, she says, is the market’s day. There is always talk of moving it to Saturday or Sunday, Rios said, but the Beachcomber board doesn’t want to compete with markets in Newport or Yachats or force vendors to choose where they go.
What vendors say
Diana Elms had owned and operated hair salons for 50 years but was forced to close her last shop during the pandemic. In retirement, the Waldport resident turned to art, starting with jewelry and glass work, then picking up canvasses “and flinging paint at them,” she says.
It’s her second year. The first year she sold all the wall art – layers of bright acrylic paint and beach stuff on canvases all coated in epoxy – that she could make, so now she concentrates on just those.
“I sold eight paintings by noon,” Elms said between talking to customers at last Wednesday’s market, the only one she does.
“It’s just fun,” she says. “I’m retired. I’m 70. It’s almost become a job” of the paintings that take a month to produce.
It’s a bit of a different story for Roy and Jenn Olsen, owners of How We Roll Bakery.
The couple moved from Draper, Utah to Siletz after selling their cafe, which exploded in growth – and headaches – after Buzzfeed News named it the best brunch site and bakery in the state.
“We had 16 employees at our height,” Roy Olsen says. “But it was more than we wanted.”
They built their home in Siletz around a commercial kitchen and now specialize in a butter cake pastry of laminated dough called Kouigan Amann that takes them three days to make.
“I tell people it’s a life changing pastry,” Roy Olsen says of the roll that accounted for 40 percent of their Utah café’s business.
Customers seem to agree on the first-year vendors’ work – buying all 120 of the $6 creation Wednesday in Waldport and 300 so far each Saturday in Newport.
“This is our job – the markets in Waldport, Newport and Lincoln City,” says Roy Olsen. “But this way we get to talk to our customers.”