Heard Under The Sheds - 28/7/2019

This weekend’s Indian Festival was held at the top of A Shed which meant that organisers could operate over two days and leave their stalls set up overnight. On Sunday at least the crowd seemed to rival that of the Truffle Festival, and in typical Indian fashion there was a lot of noise and some great fragrances from the variety of foods. Another benefit of the A Shed location was that the festival was able to operate into the evening and some nearby QVM food outlets reported they were operating well past their normal closing time as they took advantage of the crowd.

A bit of history - An elderly customer was seen standing in a SBA stall on Wednesday night, staring up at the ceiling. He was there for some time, and Trader, Mary, was quite puzzled by his presence. It turns out his family used to have a String Bean stall many years ago and he was looking for their business name on the back of the gutter barge board. If you check our photo you can see that some of the names show through the paint. The elderly customer was a child at his parents stall so SBA goes back a long way. Mary's stall is called Retro Mamma, and she is pretty chuffed with the historical connection.

By the way – a whole aisle for string beans suggests they were a much more popular food than today.

The debate over proposed new trading hours has raised many conversations and much condemnation particularly over the proposed 5pm closure on weekends. One trader said she would like to see different times for the different seasons. She maintains that 5pm may be OK in summer but probably not in winter.

One of our stall setupperers/packdownerers (please help me with a better term – Ed) says that 5pm closing would be out of the question for him. He would tell his clients they will have to find someone else to work through dinner time.

One Trader wants to know what all the fuss is about. "The proposed hours only involve one extra hour of trade a week."

A customer walked into the Night Market with a very large white rabbit perched on his shoulder – yes, a rabbit. He was quickly asked to leave by security staff – something about unleashed animals in a public space. The customer and the rabbit refused to comment.

There are rumours of more containers to come to the Upper Market, most likely in the A-E Shed sector.

A Trader says that there is currently a major focus on experimentation in the retail industry and he would like to see more freedom for traders to try new ideas at QVM. 

Have Your Say - click here.