Josey Chu, right, offers samples of her Southeast Asian condiments at a 2017 food fair. She hopes to secure a vending spot at the Madison Public Market when it opens.
Hair tied back with a purple bandana, Josey Chu hands out samples of artisanal condiment pastes inspired by Southeast Asian flavors she remembers from her childhood in Singapore — flavors she struggled to find in Madison when she first came to the city as a student in 1999. In a small plastic cup, she mixes rice with pastes she hand-crafts using family recipes she discovered in her late mother’s cookbook collection. They were handwritten Malay-Chinese recipes passed down by her Peranakan grandmother.
Chu, who is not related to this reporter, is one of the Madison vendors showcasing local products at the Garden & Landscape Expo at Alliant Center in early February. Chu hopes her small business, Madame Chu, will one day find a home at the Madison Public Market, which the city is aiming to open in 2021.
“We would like to bring the cuisine of Southeast Asia — like Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia — to the Madison community as well as greater Madison and Dane County,” Chu says. “Being able to be a partner in the public market would mean that we could showcase our product that is truly Southeast Asian and not something that they have to pay $2,000 per ticket to fly to Singapore to enjoy.”
Public markets across the country are designed for different purposes — some to retail high-end food to attract business people and tourists. Mayor Paul Soglin has said the Madison Public Market is designed to provide universal access to affordable healthy food throughout the city.
Jamaal Stricklin, president of the Madison Public Market Foundation, says the foundation views the project through a lens of equity. “We wanted to do this to provide entrepreneurship in the food industry and increase entrepreneurship in underserved communities — people of color, women, minorities,” Stricklin says. “What we really want to do is have people express their culture through their offerings.… We want to create more jobs in the food industry, but not just dishwashing jobs. We’re trying to increase opportunities for people.”
Jamaal Stricklin, president of the Madison Public Market Foundation, hopes the market will provide opportunities for people of color and women.
The public market moved closer to reality on Feb. 5, when the Common Council appointed the Madison Public Market Foundation to oversee operations and the Minneapolis-based firm Meyer, Scherer & Rockcastle to oversee design and engineering.
In December, Soglin announced that the city is moving the location of the market about two blocks — from First Street and East Washington Avenue to the intersection of First and East Johnson streets, where the city’s Fleet Services building is.
The city is now developing a new Fleet Services facility on Nakoosa Trail and expects to vacate the current building by 2020. City officials says the new location would likely lower the cost of the public market, but the exact savings are not yet known.
Stricklin, who is also a member of the market’s development committee, says the 45,000-square-foot Fleet Services building offers a larger space than the original site. The foundation is now working on raising $4 million for the market before it opens.
Funding for the rest of the $14 million project, according to the city’s 2019 capital budget, will come from state and federal grants, federal tax credits, money left over from other city projects, and the city’s general fund.
Stricklin hopes his group’s commitment to social justice will shine through in the design of the spaces, which will include the market hall, an outdoor plaza, a children’s area and art spaces.
“It’s going to be a little more gritty,” Stricklin says. “There’s going to be more things going on because it’s all about making sure that the market will be reflective of the different populations in Madison, so everyone will feel comfortable being there.”
Ian Aley is facilitating the vendor selection process and the equity vision of the project. Aley is coordinator of MarketReady, a city-funded program launched in 2017 in partnership with local organizations. The program was tasked with providing 30 prospective vendors for the public market with business coaching, peer-to-peer mentoring and microgrants. Of the 30 entrepreneurs, 83 percent are people of color, 63 percent are women and 33 percent are first-generation immigrants.
MarketReady is helping participants draft business and marketing plans, set pricing, and design packaging, Aley says.
“They started this program before the market opens so these business owners would build a community,” Aley says. “So when it comes time to actually apply to be a vendor in the market, they would be on even footing with some of the more established businesses.”
Participants in MarketReady, including Chu, were given a $700 educational stipend. Chu also received a $2,500 grant from the program, which she used to invest in a bottling machine that has since sped up her production time.
Reyna Gonzalez, who produces about 10,000 tamales a week and uses some 2,000 pounds of corn a month, used her MarketReady grant to import a cornmill from Mexico. She plans to use it to grind locally grown corn into flour to produce fresher tamales. MarketReady is connecting Gonzalez with local farmers, which Aley says creates an “economic multiplier effect.”
“Let’s say you go to the Latino grocery store to buy a tamale, you’re supporting that Latino grocery store owner, who bought [the tamale] from Reyna, who is a local business owner, who bought her corn from a farmer just outside Madison,” Aley says. “That’s three times that dollar was spent in the local economy.”
Participation in MarketReady does not guarantee entry to the public market, Stricklin says. Stricklin estimates the foundation will select vendors for the market after the design plan is finalized and organizers know how many can be accommodated. So far, more than 200 businesses have expressed interest in vending at the market.
After the market opens, Stricklin hopes it continues to nurture prospective entrepreneurs. He envisions some vendors moving on to find their own commercial space and nascent businesses taking their space in the market. “We’d like this ideally to be an incubator program,” Stricklin says.
For now, Chu hopes that she can be part of the market community.
“I feel like I have a group of friends [from MarketReady] that support each other,” says Chu. “We share the same values, we share a desire to build a dream even though we don’t have the means.”
