Montclair Farmers Market Manager
Lynley Jones
We are currently looking for a friendly, outgoing person who loves food and is capable of physical labor to run the show as Market Manager at our Montclair Farmers Market booth during the 2024 season. It’s fun!
Step 1: Read all about it on this page
Then, if you think this might be a good fit for you…
Step 2: Click this button to fill out an application!
Montclair Market Manager - Your Role:
Once you’re fully trained and ready, you’ll be running our farmers market booth on your own from beginning to end each Saturday. This is a manager role, because you’ll be the leader, representing Adventure Kitchen at the market each time you work. You’ll be responsible for making decisions and judgment calls, in alignment with our business values and priorities, in addition to setting things up, breaking down, and serving our customers throughout day.
In this role, you’ll have three main responsibilities:
1) Loading the van, setting up and breaking down our market booth each week.
Each week you’ll load up the van at our Montclair HQ (about 5 minutes from the market) with merchandise/supplies, drive it to the market and set up our booth.
You’ll use your own phone as a personal hotspot to connect the devices at the booth.
At the end of each shift, you’ll break down the booth and drive the van about 5 minutes back to HQ to unload everything.
2) Helping our customers have adventures in food!
Throughout the day, you’ll greet and welcome customers, share recipes and resources with them, assist them with tasting samples, answer questions and help them select products that best fit their needs.
You’ll handle all cash, credit card, Venmo etc. transactions.
You’ll help customers sign up for our weekly recipe emails and/or find more recipes and info on our website (via provided iPad).
During Spice Pop (ice pop) season, you’ll work collaboratively with our Spice Pop sales associate to meet our customers’ needs across product lines.
3) Following along with Adventure Kitchen recipes, new products and food content each week!
You’ll receive our weekly recipe email and review it before the market each week.
You’ll get familiar with our website, recipes, social media and other content, so you can help customers find what they’re looking for.
You’ll have fun cooking at home with the free spices you get to take home each week, and chatting with customers about your own food discoveries and favorites.
Compensation:
$240 per market day, plus bonuses when you reach sales and email targets! This position is paid on a per diem basis, rather than hourly. So you’ll get the $240 (plus possible bonuses!) as a stipend each time you work.
(Note that additional training time will be paid at $20/hour.)
…plus these other benefits:
You’ll get a free full membership to Cooking Club! Every employee at Adventure Kitchen gets a free Content Membership, but as our Farmers Market Manager you’ll get a Full Membership, including a monthly physical Cooking Club Kit in addition to full access to our members-only content and monthly Zoom cooking classes.
You’ll get access to our new digital cooking course Roadmap to Becoming a Better Daily Cook, absolutely free. This perk goes far beyond the 50% discount other Adventure Kitchen employees get.
You get to take home a FREE product of your choice (spices and ingredients) once a week, every week that you work. Have fun cooking with them, and let us know what you make!
You’ll receive a 40% employee discount on all Adventure Kitchen spices!
You get a free Spice Pop (ice pop) every day that you work! (in season)
Hours:
Exact timeframes will vary depending on the time it takes you to set up and break down each week. And the more familiar you get with the routine, the faster it will go! Here is the schedule:
At the market: Every Saturday (rain or shine!) from May 4 - November 23
The market is open 8am-2pm during the main season June-November, and 8am-1pm during the early/late seasons. The market is rain or shine, but in case of extreme weather we may cancel or break down early. (You would not be paid if we have to cancel the market in advance due to weather, but you would be paid for the full day if we ask you to break down early for any reason.)
Your exact work hours will depend on how long it takes you to set up and break down, but you should plan on the following rough timeframes:
During the Main Season (June-November):
Approximately 6:15am-3:30pm
During the Early Season (May)
Approximately 6:15am - 2:30pm
Plus Additional Training Time: to be scheduled beginning in April (see below)
Hiring Process
Once you fill out an application, here’s what will happen:
1) If you seem like you may be a good fit for the position, Lynley will be in touch to set up an interview.
2) We may ask you to participate in an additional interview or other activity.
3) If you’re selected as a finalist, you’ll be asked to work one or two short shifts (2-3 hours) at our Montclair kitchen with Lynley and the team so you can get a sense of our business and we can see what it might be like to work together. You’ll be paid $20/hour for your time.
4) We’re hoping to make final hiring decisions the week of April 8.
Training Plans
Once you’re hired…
Training will be a combination of sessions at our Montclair HQ kitchen, plus hands-on training at our Montclair Farmers Market booth.
Training will cover things like setup and breakdown logistics, sales, cooking with our spices, customer interactions, and possibly racial equity training.
You’ll start with some partial shifts at the farmers market until you’re ready to run the show fully on your own.
You’ll be paid $20/hour for all training sessions but our goal is to get you up and running on your own with the full $240 per diem as soon as you’re ready!
Who We're Looking For:
We're looking for curious cooks!
=> We’re looking for people who love food and cooking, and who want to learn more about the world of food.
=> Or if you’re newer to cooking and have a passion to learn more, you might also be a great fit and we’d love to talk to you!
We’re looking for diverse team members who can enrich Adventure Kitchen with a variety of culinary and cultural traditions and backgrounds.
We’re looking for reliable, self-directed people with good judgment to be the face of Adventure Kitchen! Once you are fully trained and ready, you’ll be on your own running our farmers market booth from beginning to end each day.
At Adventure Kitchen, we keep our hearts and minds open. We are looking for people who are eager to learn more about the world of food, and who love talking to new people, sharing culinary discoveries, and listening to our customers as they share their experiences with us. Learning new things about food and cooking from our diverse customers is one of the best parts of this job! If you are the type of person who thinks there is only one “right” way to cook or use a particular ingredient, then you probably won’t be a good fit for our culture. We’re learning all the time!
We value honesty, generosity, kindness and hard work. While we all have different roles and responsibilities, everyone’s contributions are equally respected, and no one is above rolling up their sleeves and pitching in. We value the dignity of work and take pride in a job well done.
To be successful in this role, you should be flexible and coachable, as well as friendly and outgoing. You should be comfortable talking to new people all the time, as well as listening to them and learning from them. At the farmers market, we smile and greet everyone who comes our way, and we make new friends just about every day!
More About What to expect:
You must be able to stand on your feet all day and do the physical labor of carrying things up and down stairs, setting up and breaking down each week. We do not sit down or lean on things while working at the market.
You’ll need a clean black shirt/sweater/top with no logos or writing to wear during each shift.
You’ll be driving our Adventure Kitchen minivan to and from the market each day, so you’ll need a clean driving record. And we’ll need a copy of your driver’s licence to keep on file.
You’ll be handing money, keys, access codes, and driving our minivan, so we’ll need to run a background check to make sure you won’t have any issues with those tasks, and to keep everyone safe.
As described above, you’ll need a phone you can use as a hotspot to connect our devices at the market each day you work. Most regular smartphones have this capability with an unlimited data plan.
You should feel comfortable initiating conversations with strangers and chatting with them about food and cooking (or whatever they want to talk about!).
10 reasons this is one of the best jobs around!
1) You get awesome foodie perks like a free Cooking Club membership, free digital courses, free spices and free Spice Pops!
2) You get to have fun conversations with our diverse, loyal customers who love what we sell and will love getting to know you!
3) You get to spend the day at the farmers market, surrounded by the best food vendors in the garden state (many of whom offer discounts to fellow vendors - like you!)
4) You get to work for Adventure Kitchen, an exciting, best-in-class, growing, values-driven and woman-owned business!
5) You can feel proud knowing that 10% of the profits from every sale helps food-related charities like sustainable agriculture, hunger relief and more. And you get to help choose where those donations go each year!
6) You’ll get paid to learn about food, spices, sourcing and more during our training sessions.
7) You can feel proud that the products you’re selling are of the highest quality and ethically sourced, often directly from the small farmers/producers who grow, mill or produce them.
8) You’ll get to be part of our fun team of smart local folks who love food and are the best at what they do.
9) You’ll get to work for a business that strives to live up to these inspiring values every day.
10) You’ll get paid a generous weekly stipend, plus bonuses for reaching sales and email targets.
More About Adventure Kitchen:
We’re an exciting, growing Montclair-based business, striving to be a destination for curious cooks to have all kinds of adventures in food. We're a purpose-driven business! We are committed to bringing the world together through food and cooking, and this mission is more important now than ever before.
More about Adventure Kitchen:
Is this role the right fit for you? Hooray!
Please click the green button to fill out an application. We’ll be in touch soon!
Have a question?
Send us a note from our Contact Us page and we’ll be in touch right away.
Not Right for you? No worries!
Follow Careers at Adventure Kitchen
To get an email every time we post a new position, go here to put your name on our Careers email list. We may be filling additonal positions in the future, and one of those might be a better fit for you.
Please share this post!
If you know someone who would be perfect for this, please share this post with them!
We're currently looking for talented people to staff a few key roles on a part-time basis. On this page: all about Adventure Kitchen, what we do, perks of working with us, and more. Links to job descriptions and applications. Or sign up for automatic email updates whenever we post a new job opening.