Stall fees and attendance for market managers
The idea
A farmers market manager runs a six-figure seasonal operation on a clipboard, a cash envelope, and a Gmail thread per vendor. Stall fees get collected in crumpled twenties at 7am, no-shows leave gaps in the row while waitlisted vendors sit at home, and at renewal time nobody has real attendance data.
MarketWurks exists but is dated and priced per vendor, which punishes exactly the growth managers want. A flat monthly fee undercuts it structurally. The wedge pairing is automatic Stripe invoicing with the market-morning tap-sheet, because fees and attendance are the two clipboards the manager actually carries.
Who pays
The market manager pays 29 USD/month per market, frequently out of city, nonprofit, or grant funding that actively rewards digitisation line items. Distribution: state and regional farmers market associations, the Farmers Market Coalition, and manager conferences; this is a small, densely networked profession where one happy manager presents your tool at the annual meeting.
MVP scope
- Market setup with numbered stall grid and season dates
- Vendor roster with agreements, assigned stalls, and fee schedules
- Automatic Stripe invoicing with cash-payment manual marking
- Mobile market-morning attendance tap-sheet
- No-show waitlist offers with first-accept-wins at a drop-in rate
- Skip for v1: vendor self-service portal, SNAP/token tracking, multi-market chains, drag-and-drop map designer
Build StallBook, a web app for farmers market managers covering vendor rosters, stall fees, and market-morning attendance. Stack: Next.js (App Router), Supabase (Postgres + auth + storage), Stripe for vendor invoicing and manager billing. Core flow: the manager sets up a market with its season dates and a simple stall map (numbered stalls in named rows, no drag-and-drop canvas needed, a grid is fine). Vendors are added with contact details, product category, an uploaded agreement PDF, and an assigned stall plus fee (weekly or per-season). Stripe invoices go out automatically on the manager's chosen schedule, and payment status shows on the roster. On market morning the manager opens the attendance tap-sheet on their phone: one row per expected vendor, tap present or no-show. A no-show at the cutoff time (default 30 minutes before open) triggers the waitlist: the next waitlisted vendor gets an SMS-style text via email-to-SMS or plain email offering the stall for today at the drop-in rate, first accept wins. Pages: market setup with stall grid, vendor roster with payment status, agreements storage, market-morning tap-sheet, waitlist manager, season revenue summary, billing. Implementation details: model attendance per market-date so history supports the who-actually-shows-up report managers use at renewal time. Support cash payments as manually-marked paid so the transition off envelopes is gradual. Pricing: 29 USD/month per market via Stripe Checkout, 60-day trial to cover a chunk of a season.
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