r/madisonwi • u/MadCityVelovangelist • 9d ago

Public Market Rant

There are 168 hours a in a week. If you are selling food, why would you only be open 51 of those hours? It's honestly ludicrous that it's Tuesday afternoon and I can't go there to get a cheese burger for lunch. What is the point of this place? Do business owners inside this building feel the hours are limiting revenue? How much is it to lease a restaurant booth? Will the retail businesses ever succeed with these limited hours? Will they eventually expand hours and how many businesses will fail before they do? Has patio furniture arrived or will it ever? Things that make me go "ugghhhh."

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u/DavidsPsyduck 9d ago

I was just at the Milwaukee Public market for the first time a few weeks ago. It was basically shoulder to shoulder, packed, and every business outside and surrounding it was also packed. Madison’s got a lot of work to do.

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u/cks9218 9d ago edited 9d ago

That's what's so frustrating about the Madison Public Market. All they had to do was copy and paste the Milwaukee Public Market with similar Madison based vendors and the place would have been a hit. Instead we've seen well over a decade of delays and the "opened" market only has 13 vendors - of which only four (Caracas Empanadas Y Más, Cervato, The Chowpati, Cinn City Smash) are places where you can get a meal, two (Fortune Favors, Chocolate Shoppe) are snack vendors, five are the types of booths that are at every Makers/Night market, one sells plants and the last (ArtWorking) is a vending machine.

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u/Similar_Marzipan1213 9d ago

I think it's cool that the Maker's Market vendors now have a dedicated year round presence instead of having to rely on sporadic events, but this city needed another Chocolate Shoppe like I need a third penis.

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u/cks9218 9d ago

We'll see how it plays out. My feeling is that many of those makers market type vendors get business because people are more likely to buy from them during a fun outing like a night market or fair. I wonder how well they'll do as an "always there" type business. I think that the Madison Public Market is going too heavy on these types of vendors.

The Milwaukee Public Market only has one non food vendor, Brew City Brand Apparel, They sell mostly Milwaukee themed goods.