It's time for a grand opening party at the Manchester Market

The Manchester Market is planning a grand opening this weekend.

Submitted by Kenny Frost on behalf of Acorn and the team at Manchester Market

The team at the Acorn Farmers' Market & Cafe would like to extend its gratitude to the Manchester community for making our soft opening a success. By announcing only to the local community via social media and the Manchester Mirror, we were able to adapt to the challenges of opening such a large and interdepartmental market. The gracious and courteous locals were the perfect guests to help us ease into operations, and the goodwill, patience and respect that is so helpful for a new operation was in our store from open to close every day. Thank you!

After 25 days with our doors open almost exclusively to local residents, we are preparing for our combined Grand Opening on Saturday, Oct. 16 in collaboration with our partners at Manchester Market. This collaboration with Manchester Market, Grand River Brewery, Perky Pantry, Iorio Gelato, and Curt Titus Designs is what has made this project especially unique, and innovative. With their tenacious efforts, we expect and hope that the Grand Opening will be the beginning of the Manchester Market's unofficial designation as a "destination stop." We hope the publicity and ensuing traffic will bring excited visitors to Manchester and that the energy and commerce they bring will flow over into other surrounding local businesses.

Our mission at Acorn is to model a rural, community-driven market that provides access to fresh food and supports the economic viability of area farmers by promoting education, collaboration, and entrepreneurship. We exist to connect the community to our local and regional farmers and help residents eat well in the process. Farmers keep 75% of each sale, which is five times the national average for nonlocal distributed goods. We are currently working with more than 40 vendors and that number grows almost every day. In our first 16 days we have returned over $900 a day to local vendors for their goods and labor. To date, that's over $14,000 of your shopping dollars being invested into local agrarian practice. Our community will directly see the impact of our dollars helping to sustain working farms and food artisans in our region. Thank you to our vendors, shoppers, staff, and business partners for coming together to make the Acorn model work for Manchester.

We are excited for our Grand Opening; we all know there is never a second chance to make a first impression. So how are we ushering in this exciting opportunity for Manchester to shine even brighter? With a party, of course.

We are keeping normal hours (7 am-7 pm for Acorn; all other operations open until 9 pm), but will host the local soul, R&B, and rock group Bille Lewis and the Soulbacks from 11 am-2 pm. We will be serving Grand River Brewery food from the commissary and sampling Iorio's in-house gelato. Acorn will be hosting many of our local vendors to help shoppers, as well as Josh from Musgrove coffee, our partner and roaster out of Tecumseh. There will be games and activities, including pumpkin painting, and if you haven't decorated for the season yet, we are planning a complete decorative fall ensemble both indoors and out. More exciting things are coming together, and we will announce them on our social media.

This has been an exciting time for new businesses in Manchester, and we hope that in addition to celebrating our gratitude and success that this event can serve to help, celebrate, and promote other local businesses. The challenges of opening a business in a pandemic year are quite deserving of a proper party. And we're kicking it off this Saturday.

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by Marsha Chartrand

Marsha Johnson Chartrand, a founder, writer, and copy editor with the Manchester Mirror, is a 50-year resident of Manchester. She has a long history of volunteer and community involvement.