Market layout planner

How to lay out a market that flows

A good market layout is mostly about movement. Shoppers should be pulled past every booth without ever feeling squeezed, and vendors should be able to load in and out without driving through the crowd. A few rules of thumb that hold up across farmers markets, craft fairs, and night markets:

• Aisles: 10 ft minimum, 15 ft if strollers and dogs are your crowd. Two 10×10 booth rows facing each other across a 10 ft aisle is the classic module — it keeps browsing intimate without bottlenecks.
• Put anchors at the ends, not the entrance. Your most popular vendors — the bakery with the line, the flower stand — belong at the far corners so their pull walks shoppers past everyone else.
• Food and seating cluster together, downwind of the browsing rows. Prepared-food queues are long and slow; keep them off the main circulation path.
• One clear entrance beats three vague ones. A single well-marked entry point lets you greet, count, and route shoppers — and gives your info tent an obvious home just inside it.
• Plan power before you assign booths. Drop power markers where the drops or generators actually are, then place the vendors who need them adjacent — extension cords across aisles are a tripping hazard and an inspector magnet.
• Leave a service lane. Vehicles need to reach every booth during load-in and emergencies need a path during hours. If a fire truck can't get in, your permit conversation gets harder.

From a sketch to a running market

The planner gives you the map; the map is the easy half. The recurring work is applications, booth assignments, invoices, insurance certificates, and market-day check-in — every week, all season. That's the half VendorStreet runs: vendors apply online, you assign the stalls you just drew, booth fees collect through your own Stripe account for a flat $1 per booking, and expiring insurance chases itself.