For Mid-Autumn Festival this year I joined Leftie Lee’s, Badass Asian Women, and Enso Izakaya for the Olive + Pine Asian Night Market! It was my first time vending with these organizers and this location, so while I didn’t know what to expect in sales, I knew to expect good food!
Applying for BAW events
Applications were interesting for the Asian Night Market. First I followed Badass Asian Women on Instagram after hearing about the Leftie Lee’s art market at Winter Wanderland 2024. Then eventually I saw that BAW put up a Google form link where vendors could apply to be on their list for future events. It may have been sometime this summer?
Fast forward to early September, and I got an acceptance email for the Olive + Pine Asian Night Market from Naomi. All I had to do was submit payment for the booth fee, $50, and I’d be set. I was a little confused, because I’m more used to market organizers reaching out for applications to specific dates, and then telling you you’re accepted or rejected. For a moment, I did wonder if I applied for the date properly but didn’t remember? Ha, ha.
Having a third event slotted for October would be tough, but I really wanted a chance to check out how BAW runs their events, so I submitted payment. And maybe I was also lured in by the tasty treats on Leftie Lee’s Instagram! Naomi had attached a potential map layout so I could see there’d be both indoor and outdoor tent spaces. To keep it simple, I expressed my preference for indoors. Three outdoor shows back to back would be so much >w<
Around Thursday night, we got another email with our final vendor map and more details on how the Asian Night Market would go down! Recommendations on free parking, wi-fi password, restroom locations, and links to BAW’s social media. Load-in would officially start at 4 PM which I personally felt was cutting it close to the 5 PM start time. Seems I wasn’t the only one who thought so, because quite a few other vendors showed up a little early ^^;
Interestingly, the email also said we were free to pack-up early whenever we were ready. Most organizers I’ve worked with make a point to ask vendors to stay the entire event, so I think that bit of flexibility is notable!
Asian Night Market
Fortuitously, I had visited Leftie Lee’s during my Atlanta Zoo trip in August, so I was familiar with Olive + Pine’s geography. For load-in there wasn’t a super obvious spot to park with your hazards on as you dump your stuff outta your car. So I temporarily parked in the neighboring free lot which had the entrance closest to my booth location. I was assigned to be right across from the entrance to Enso Izakaya, the new Japanese cocktail bar and restaurant. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a ramp from this parking lot so each wagon run had to endure two short step hops. Afterwards, I moved my car to the free gravel lot reserved for Olive + Pine employees and customers.
Of course, for dinner events it’s very important to order food before the crowd arrives! Since I arrived earlier, the pop-up chefs hadn’t prepped the kitchen yet so I could only order from the Leftie Lee’s menu, which was perfectly fine. I’m a sucker for tteokbokki and I spotted a lovely pandan cake in their glass display. My tteokbokki order was even delivered to my booth! I was in such a rush to set up though, I wasn’t able to get a moment to eat until 5:30 PM. I didn’t even bother setting up my photo stand, I was too tired >w< had a rough night of sleep the night before.
Now that I’ve done a few food focused events, I think it can be hard for us art vendors to compete with good food. Or at least, for me personally, haha. When customers come to the venue hungry, they are going to walk past you until they’ve had dinner. Though I’m sure my flustered frantic rush to finish my booth setup didn’t help. There were definitely customers trickling in by if not before 5 PM and the traffic flow felt pretty strong until a sharp drop off around 8 PM, when most people had gotten their fill of dinner. Most of my sales happened between 6-8 PM, which I hypothesized is due to a staggered flow of people browsing after they’ve eaten. At one point in the middle of the market, Vivian Lee, the chef of Leftie Lee’s, stopped by and said the kitchen had completely sold out!
Vibes wise, this really felt like a warm neighborhood community event with a lot of families and local residents in attendance. It does make me wonder how much of the event’s draw was from the location of Avondale Estate’s downtown city? There were lots of children and their parents herding them about. The first hour of the market, the K Pop Demon Hunters soundtrack was blasting from the other entrance, haha.
Since it’s October, I tried setting out a candy bowl at my table. I decided to fill it with hi-chews to keep with the theme of Asian foods, and as a last second addition, put some origami snakes I’d been working on as well. I’ve been picking up origami as a casual hobby so that I could have trinkets to trade during events, and it occurred to me the snakes would help round out the cauldron. There were a lot of children at the market, so I was glad to hand out some candy, but I was surprised at how excited young adults were for candy and snakes as well.
At a few points, both event organizers Naomi and Han dropped by to introduce themselves, check on how we were doing, and ask if we needed anything. They also took footage to for social media and let us know about a few upcoming markets in November and December. I’ll keep an eye out for deets to see if they can fit my schedule. Around 8:30 or so they came back around to remind us we had the okay to pack up early if we’d like, since most of the dinner crowd had left. Since most of the other vendors were packing up early in my row, I decided to follow suit.
Peak purchase times for me were between 6-7 PM, with a slow start at 5 PM, and a slow down after 8 PM. Not counting my own food purchases, I made back just 10 dollars short of three times the booth fee, about $140 in revenue. Which is just baaarely under what I’d like for a successful event, but I had so much fun eating a lot of good food, I think we can nudge Asian Night Market up a little.
Billie’s Vendor Review
| Food | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Foot Traffic | ⭐⭐⭐ |
| Attendee Vibes | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Restrooms | ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
| Pokémon GO | ⭐⭐⭐⭐ |
Badass Asian Women seem to be newer event organizers and while not all of their future events will be Asian themed, it looks like they want to focus on markets that’ll bring communities together. And I think that goal did come through with the Asian Night Market. I’ll keep them on my radar and hope I can make it to another event in the future!
Also, towards the latter half of the market, a couple came by offering bánh mì sandwiches to the vendors. I was unclear who they were, but I wasn’t the only vendor to eat my free sandwich. It was tasty!
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