By The vendors that once served the Long Beach State community a snack before class at Associated Students, Inc.’s Farmers Market are now struggling to stay in business during the pandemic, which caused widespread farmers market closures across Southern California due to stay-at-home orders.
ASI’s Farmers Market, held at Friendship Walk, was an anticipated monthly event, featuring vendors that sold everything from pupusas to fresh produce.
Now, ASI’s events like the farmers market have been canceled. But for repeat vendors like Crystal Pure Honey, Brothers Products and The Tamale Fiesta, it has been just another challenge in the past seven months.
Kristina Aguilar offers free samples of honey, grown from bee farms around Southern Caifornia including La Brea. Photograph by Paris Barraza.
Crystal Aguilar met her beekeeping husband seven years ago. Now, they own Crystal Pure Honey, a business that is reliant on farmers markets and festivals like the Los Angeles County Fair to sell their products.
In March, all of that changed.
“It’s sad that we don’t get to connect to our customers,” Aguilar said. “When you go out to sell in the farmers markets you go in and meet people. Every week you meet someone new. It’s a bond you have with the customers. Even with the ones we have open right now with the markets, you can’t get too close.”
Every year, Aguilar’s bee farms produce 100 barrels of honey that each contain 600 pounds of honey. Without customers to sell their individual jars of honey to, Crystal Pure Honey had to sell their honey by the barrel to larger businesses.
It was difficult to find a business in need of all of that honey, and selling wholesale cut into Crystal Pure Honey’s profits.
Kristina Aguilar sells the honey that her son-in-law collects. Photograph by Paris Barraza.
Like Crystal Pure Honey, the majority of The Tamale Fiesta’s business came from farmers markets.
Without them, owner Nancy Herring lost the majority of her income, forcing her family to live off of their savings.
Herring tried to do online sales and deliveries, but it became clear that the cost of gas was higher than the sale of the order. Now, The Tamale Fiesta switched to street vending, but it was not a perfect solution.
Herring had to lower the prices of their menu as well as well as reduce her employee’s wages. Still, it was a better alternative than leaving them without employment.
Samuel Rosales and Leonardo Banuelos sell tamales at Long Beach State University’s Farmers Market. Photograph by Paris Barraza.
“We’re trying to help them out and at the same time, even if sometimes it doesn’t leave us profit, as long as it’s able to pay for the expenses, that’s really what matters,” Herring said.
Green and red chile tamales are sold at Long Beach State University’s Farmers Market by The Tamale Fiesta. Photograph by Paris Barraza.
The most difficult challenge for Herring’s family was not the changes in their business, but the struggle of working while her two young children are at home practicing distance learning.
“I’m out in the street working and so I have to call my mom and she’s like, ‘Well, how do you turn this on and what button do I press,’ and so it’s been difficult sometimes,” Herring said. “I’ve noticed that I have to skip work in order to stay at home to make sure that things run smoothly with the kids in the school.”
Flavors of hummus sit in an ice bath from Brothers Products, a company that used to attend farmers markets Tuesday through Sunday. Photograph by Paris Barraza.
Ayman Ammar also has a family he works for.
He and five of his brothers own and run Brothers Products, which sells homemade hummus and spreads.
Ammar explained how for now, all he could do was to keep pushing through for the sake of him and his brother’s families.
“We lost so much business. Thank god [my family is] safe, that’s our main concern right now,” Ammar said.
Brothers Products began to do deliveries to help mitigate the loss of revenue and reached out to grocery stores so that they could continue selling their products.
But the closure of farmers markets was not the only loss Brothers Products experienced. Their own storefront in Garden Grove closed after one month of being open, which had been under construction for six months prior.
“When you see all these machines, when you see the lights off, when you see the ice makers, when you see the dream you’ve been wanting to do start to fall in front of your eye, it hurts,” Ammar said.
This article previously contained an outdated photo caption. A correction was made on Sept. 29 at 3:35 p.m.
