Popular Winnipeg markets teaming up to help shoppers buy local during coronavirus pandemic

Two popular markets are teaming up to present a new, socially-distanced opportunity to buy local from Manitoba makers.

Third + Bird, a long-running urban market featuring established and up-and-coming Winnipeg artists and artisans, is coming back from COVID-19 lockdown on Thursday afternoon, setting up shop at the farmers’ market site in St. Norbert.

Third + Bird’s founders, Charla Smeall and Chandra Kremski, told 680 CJOB collaborating with the St. Norbert Farmers’ Market was a natural fit coming out of the coronavirus crisis as a large public event.

“We’re a huge event, so we’re going be the last phase, if any. We kind of sat with it in shock, and thought — OK, what are we going to do?” said Smeall.

“As the spaces started opening up, we just started getting creative — what can we do, how can we get people back together in person in a safe way?”

Kremski said they saw the St. Norbert Farmers’ Market had opened up with unique physical-distancing plans, including curbside delivery, so they took a trip down to the southern edge of the city to see it for themselves.

“We went down there and met with organizers and we shared our platform and our heart and realized very quickly that we both have similar values, ideas when it comes to supporting local and supporting local producers and farmers,” she said.

“Together we decided, we’re both in the same position, we both need each other to survive this 2020 pandemic.

“We have assets we can bring to St. Norbert, and they have assets they can bring to us, so it just made the perfect partnership to put community over competition and come together.”

In addition to the in-person market, which will run every Thursday from 2 to 8 p.m. in St. Norbert, Third + Bird is also working on launching an online store for the first time, as an option for those who still don’t feel quite comfortable with mingling in person with other shoppers.

Smeall said the website was something Third + Bird had been planning for a while — a dream the organizers had to make the market’s wares available to people outside the city — and despite the frustrations of the pandemic, it was a perfect opportunity to work on it.

“I think this pandemic has put a lot of businesses in a position where it’s kind of like ‘sink or swim,'” Kremski said.