Extending the Farmers Market: Building for Vendors Who Value Fresh, Local, and Traditional

Baskit is a mobile marketplace where local farmers market vendors livestream products and offer same-day pickup. When rain cancels the market, vendors lose entire sales days, but their business doesn’t wait. We built a platform that extends the market beyond weather and fixed schedules while keeping what makes it special: fresh, local, personal.      

Through research with vendors and iterative testing, we designed a platform that respects their medium tech comfort while creating new selling opportunities beyond the traditional three market days a week.

View Interactive Prototype →

Local farmers market vendors face rigid operational constraints that limit when and how they can sell.      

Weather dependency

Markets run rain or shine. When weather cancels the market, vendors lose a full day of revenue, but their fresh produce doesn’t stop needing to be sold.

Fixed schedules

Vendors typically sell three days per week (Monday, Wednesday, Saturday) with long hours (7am–4pm). They want more flexibility to sell on their own terms.      

Customer friction

Buyers constantly ask “Do you have X?” before traveling to the market. There’s no way to check availability in advance.      

Existing solutions don’t fit

• TikTok Shop, Whatnot: live streaming but ship nationally, not local pickup
• Farmish, Locally Grown: local pickup but static listings, no live interaction
• Too Good To Go: waste reduction focus, not full marketplace

The gap

Live + local pickup is completely underserved.      

We conducted six user interviews with farmers market vendors, hobby sellers, and market workers. Through affinity mapping, we identified six major themes:      

1. Vendor work patterns

• Markets operate on fixed schedules (Mon/Wed/Sat)
• Vendors work 12-hour shifts on market days
• Many have full-time jobs and sell part-time

2. Weather and operational challenges

• “When it rains, we lose a whole day of sales”
• “The weather is the biggest frustration”
• Delivery often unavailable, so sellers have to discard or donate leftovers
• Orders canceled on bad weather days

3. Customer interactions

• Most common question: “Do you have [items]?”
• Customers need to validate product quality in person
• In-person relationships matter
• “Is this frozen or fresh?”

4. Technology and digital presence

• Medium tech comfort—not highly technical but willing to try
• Social media presence exists but is poorly maintained
• Online payment is secondary: “We run our farm the old media way”
• Concerns about livestream setup cost and complexity

5. Business models and opportunities

• Experience with bundle sales and group buying
• Complex stock planning on market days
• Desire for more selling opportunities outside the market
• Value brand identity as traditional and natural

6. Product quality and values

• Everything made fresh daily
• Reputation as handcrafted, high-end, organic
• Customers willing to pay extra for brand values
• “Freshness is why people come to farmers markets”

Design challenge

How might we extend selling opportunities for local vendors while respecting their values around freshness, local relationships, and medium tech comfort?

The platform needed to:

• Provide weather backup and flexible selling days
• Keep the personal, community feel of farmers markets
• Work for vendors with medium tech comfort
• Let customers see availability before pickup
• Support the “made fresh today” model

We analyzed existing platforms to understand the landscape:
   

TikTok Shop, Instagram Live, Facebook Live

Live streaming with national shipping, inventory management, order tracking, and livestream features. Gap: not local pickup.

Farmish

Local food marketplace with static listings and pickup. Gap: no live streaming or real-time interaction.

Locally Grown

Community-supported agriculture with map-based discovery and strong onboarding. Gap: no live component.

Too Good To Go

Surplus food rescue marketplace. Gap: waste reduction focus, not a full marketplace.

Farm to People

Subscription-based local food delivery. Gap: subscription model, not flexible selling.

Finding: No platform combines live streaming with local same-day pickup for farmers market vendors.      

Card sorting (19 participants)

We ran an open card sort with 44 feature cards representing potential app functions.

Key finding: participants consistently grouped order management and pickup actions together. “Mark as ready,” “verify buyer,” and “complete order” lived in the same mental model, not separate information categories.      

This validated what vendors told us: they think about transactions as continuous workflows.  

Tree testing (7 participants)

We built an initial information architecture with five main sections and tested it across six realistic tasks:      

Overall: 57.1% average success rate.

The 0% success on buyer verification was critical. Sellers verify buyers multiple times every market day; it’s one of the most frequent tasks. We had organized by information hierarchy (verification buried under Orders), but users expected organization by task frequency.      

The team agreed we needed to redesign around how sellers actually work, not how we thought information should be organized.      

Design principles

1. Respect the “fresh daily” model – vendors control when they go live and what they show.
2. Keep it simple – medium tech comfort means clear, minimal interfaces.
3. Surface frequent tasks – daily actions should be immediately visible.
4. Maintain local connections – focus on community, not anonymous transactions.

Final information architecture

• Home – dashboard showing today’s orders and upcoming streams
• Orders – all orders with progress states and contextual actions
• Go Live – livestream setup and inventory selection
• Messages – direct communication with customers
• Inventory – product management for items and bundles

Key flows

We tested with five participants acting as new sellers going through their first live session.      

Scenario: “You just joined Baskit to sell your local produce. This is your first livestream. Make sure everything is ready before you go live.”      

Task 1: Explore homepage (Avg: 3.3/5)

What we heard:

• “Why does it say ‘Welcome back’? Am I logged in or not?”
• “What do these numbers represent? The homepage is confusing.”
• “Profile hasn’t been set up yet, so analytics feel out of place.”
  
  

Insight: the homepage should prioritize onboarding guidance for new sellers. Analytics are confusing without context.

Task 2: Add item listing (Avg: 3.8/5)

What we heard:

• “How did you get here?”, unclear navigation flow
• “What’s the difference between item listings and bundle listings?”
• “Why is SKU input in multiple places?”
• Confusion about weights, pricing, and units
  
  

Insight: simplify listing creation, clarify how bundles differ from regular items, and make navigation paths clearer.

Task 3: Start livestream (Avg: 2.3/5)

What we heard:

• “It’d be easier if this screen came first” (referring to Go Live)
• “I don’t understand the livestream setup at all”
• “Featured Items” and “Add from Existing Listings” caused confusion
• Too many setup steps before streaming
  
  

Insight: livestream setup is too complex. We need to streamline the flow and clarify what each option does.

Task 4: Verify customer identity (Avg: 3.0/5)

What we heard:

• “I want to click on the user avatar to see details”
• Participants preferred search over filters
• “Where’s the order history?”
  
  

Insight: add clearer entry points to customer information and make verification steps more visible.

Task 5: Notify buyer of ready pickup (Avg: 3.7/5)

What we heard:

• “I don’t like to DM unless it’s required, just a ready button is enough.”
• Preference for a single “Ready for Pickup” button over individual messages
• “Chat should be optional for additional questions only.”
  
  

Insight: keep pickup notification simple and avoid unnecessary steps or redundant messaging.

Summary

What worked:

• Pickup verification redesign: “Oh, it’s right there.”
• Participants understood Baskit’s value (local + flexible).
• Inventory management made sense after explaining items vs. bundles.

What needs work:

• Livestream setup flow is too complex (2.3/5 rating).
• Homepage analytics confuse new sellers with no sales history.
• Bundle creation needs clearer guidance.

   
Overall: core tasks were completable, but workflows need clearer guidance.

What we learned

The vendor ecosystem is broader than we initially thought.

Research revealed a spectrum: professional farms, hobby bakers, seasonal creators, and wholesale operations. They all face the same core problems (weather, limited days, tech comfort) but have different contexts. The platform serves this broader ecosystem, not just a narrow segment.

Vendor values shaped every design decision.

Vendors care deeply about freshness, local relationships, and handcrafted quality. Baskit needed to extend the market without replacing what makes it valuable. The platform respects their identity while creating new opportunities.

Testing early prevented bigger problems later.

The 0% tree testing result was uncomfortable but critical. We could have built the entire prototype with a buried verification flow. Finding it early let us fix it before launch.

Iteration requires honesty.

The 2.3/5 livestream score stung, but it showed exactly where to focus next. Usability testing revealed that complexity is our biggest design challenge, not whether the concept works.

1. Redesign livestream setup.

   The current flow is too complex. We’d simplify the featured items concept, reduce setup steps, and test with real vendors to see whether the “go live in 60 seconds” goal is realistic.    
   
   

2. Run tree testing again.

   We redesigned based on the 0% verification finding, but haven’t validated whether success rates improved. A second round would quantify the impact.  
   
   

3. Test with actual farmers market vendors.

   Our studies used recruited participants acting as sellers. We need real vendors to validate the “fresh daily” model and business assumptions.
   
   

4. Design the buyer experience.

   This phase focused on sellers. Buyers need a way to browse streams, place orders, and manage pickup. That’s the other half of the platform.
   
   

5. Validate the market gap.

   We still need to test whether live + local pickup solves a problem vendors will pay to solve, or whether they prefer traditional markets even with weather constraints.