We had a good experience over-all as a vendor at the 2025 Gold Rush Festival. While we didn’t sellout, we did sell most of our products and only took home a few items. As a cottage bakery, that’s good. We did learn a lot of things we can share with you as a first-time-vendor.
Lessons Learned
Event Fee – As a cottage bakery and NOT a food truck, we were still charged $100. We do not make nearly as much as food trucks. That might be a reason we would not recommend going to this one. That was roughly 20% of our net take after we consider the material costs for attending. We were very fortunate that we had a local business sponsor half of our event fee. As a cottage business, we sell “packaged” food. This food is not meant for consumption on site—it happens, but not the aim. Our food is meant to be taken. We are more like a craft vendor than a food vendor. We heard from a couple other vendors that other cottage food operators got in for $45 because they just didn’t check the box for food which might have been the smart thing to do.
EARLY Setup – We understood why they had the requirement to setup early (5am to 7am). The organizers required this due to the scheduling of road closures for the parade and 5K. However, the communications lacked detail on this process. If we had known more details, we would have only brought the tent and tables early. Then, we would have brought the the baked goods later.
Timing and Communication – The market did not actually open at 11:00 AM as communicated. Rather, it opened whenever people wanted to start spending money—which was fine. We just wish there had been clarity around how this would work. This may be a unique situation as a cottage food / baking operation.
Space (or the lack thereof) – We found the assigned space easy enough—other vendors did not fair quite so well as they had mismarked one or two of the vendor spots. We did find the space very tight as a vendor. We should have setup a few feet further forward from the back wall. That would have helped. As vendors arrived, they packed in shoulder to shoulder. Fortunately, we found a familiar face to our left (stage right in the picture). They were a freeze-dried candy vendor who we have gotten to know over the summer. The other side was a very friendly, if not a bit rowdy, church group. We are not complaining about the noise, but the proximity was tight. A little more space would have provided some comfort.
Parking was good. Foot traffic was good. Again, we had a good time and we are really on the fence regarding the cost. We would absolutely do this event again at the lower cost.
We came home with about a half dozen products that went to friends and family. This was a good day in general.
