2026 Workshops & Networking Events

Date: Friday, March 6, 2026
Time: TBA
Presented by: Culinary Tourism Alliance

Get ready for a full day of inspiration, ideas, and activities that will help you build a vibrant culinary destination. This workshop brings together farmers’ markets, food businesses, and tourism partners to explore how food can transform a place into somewhere people love to visit. Led by facilitators from the Culinary Tourism Alliance, you will discover how partnerships, authentic food experiences, and great storytelling can bring your community to life.

Through interactive sessions, you will explore culinary tourism trends, best practices, and visitor expectations. You will also learn how to design authentic food experiences, create partnerships, and build your food story. By the end of the day, you will leave with tools and strategies you can apply to your own organization and community to create a thriving culinary destination that showcases British Columbia’s taste of place.

About the Culinary Tourism Alliance:

Established in 2006, the Culinary Tourism Alliance is a national, membership-based not-for-profit organization. They work with their member communities to grow food tourism in their destinations through our destination development services, consumer marketing channels, and our various programs and events.

Date: Saturday March 7, 2026
Time: TBA
Presented by: Desmond Sobool, Deputy Chief Economist, Farm Credit Canada

Kick off the conference with a big-picture look at the forces shaping Canada’s agricultural landscape in 2026. Using FCC’s latest reports and forecasts, Desmond Sobool will share key trends affecting farm viability, off-farm income, land values and rental rates, along with productivity. Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of how national shifts impact local markets—and why supporting small farms is essential to a resilient food system.

Date: Saturday March 7, 2026
Time: TBA
Presented by: BCAFM (Farmers’ Market Nutrition Coupon Team)

Join us for an interactive workshop introducing BCAFM’s Accessibility Toolkit and Self-Assessment Guide. This session will explore how markets can identify barriers and implement practical, affordable solutions to create more welcoming and inclusive spaces for all community members. Through real-world examples and guided discussion, participants will learn how to use the self-assessment tool to evaluate their market’s current accessibility, prioritize improvements, and build stronger connections with diverse shoppers and vendors. Whether you’re just beginning to think about accessibility or already making changes, this workshop will give you actionable next steps and resources to take back to your market. 

Date: Saturday March 7, 2026
Time: TBA
Presented by: Karen Curtis, KICS Lemonade

Every community has a food story to tell—and one of the most powerful ways to share it is through cooking. Cooking demonstrations don’t just teach recipes, they connect shoppers to the farmers, the harvest, and the flavors of the season. In this engaging one-hour workshop, food educator Karen Curtis will show market managers how cooking demos can add a dash of excitement at the heart of their farmers’ market.

Karen will cover the sweet and salty —where to find skilled presenters, what kinds of demos resonate with market-goers, the permits and equipment needed, and how to contract presenters with ease. She’ll also share inspiring ideas for workshops that transform local produce into simple, crowd-pleasing dishes and spark conversations that shoppers will carry home to their own kitchens.

The session includes 30 to 40 minutes of insight and storytelling followed by 20 minutes of open Q&A, giving managers the chance to dive into their specific questions. Participants will walk away with practical tools and inspiration to weave food knowledge into their markets and create spaces where community stories are told—one bite at a time.

Resources will include:

• Sample Cooking Demo Equipment Checklist
• List of Demo Ideas
• Where to Find Food Educators
• Educator Agreement Template

Date: Saturday March 7, 2026
Time: TBA
Presented by: Meg Railton (The Collective Markets)

Data isn’t just for big business! It’s one of the most powerful tools farmers’ markets have to tell their story and strengthen their future. With many new market managers across the province, this workshop revisits the existing BCAFM Data Collection Toolkit to ensure everyone is confident using the resources already available, while also introducing new ways to deepen and expand the impact of that data.

We’ll walk through the core tools; shopper counts, vendor sales tracking, and customer feedback collection – and then go beyond the basics with fresh, practical additions. This includes how to track seasonal trends, weather impacts, and other meaningful metrics that influence attendance, sales, and vendor planning. These additions help build a fuller, more accurate picture of your market’s performance over time.

Most importantly, we’ll focus on turning data into action. You’ll learn how to translate numbers into compelling narratives and strategic decisions: strengthening grant applications, supporting advocacy, attracting the right vendors, planning more effectively, and enhancing the customer experience. Whether you’re brand new or looking to level up your current approach, this workshop provides both the foundation and the next steps to help your market thrive.

Date: Saturday March 7, 2026
Time: TBA
Presented by: Darian Kovacs (Jelly Digital Marketing & PR and Jelly Academy)

Want to spend less time chasing down shoppers and more time building community at your farmers’ market? This hands-on workshop is designed specifically for market managers, board members, and volunteers who want to learn how email marketing and automation can help grow their audience, increase attendance, and build stronger connections—with less manual effort.

You’ll learn how to start and grow an email list, set up simple automations like welcome emails and event reminders, and use data to improve your outreach over time. Even if you’re short on time or tech skills, this session will show you how to make email work for you.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why email lists are essential (and how they outperform social media)
• How to build and manage a permission-based email list
• Best practices for engaging, accessible, and effective email campaigns
• Simple automations to save time: welcome sequences, reminders, and updates
• Recommended tools for low-budget, small-team operations
• How to measure results and improve over time

Interactive Elements:

• Live demo: building an email sign-up form and automated welcome email
• Group exercise: write your market’s “welcome email” together
• Peer review: bring one email or newsletter for feedback and tips
• Real-life examples: what’s working at other markets

Post-Workshop Resources:

• Downloadable email campaign planning template
• Sample welcome email and newsletter templates
• List of beginner-friendly email tools and automation platforms
• Access to a recorded tutorial: “How to Set Up Your First Email Automation”
• Curated reading list with articles, videos, and case studies
• Optional 1-on-1 support session (limited spots available)

This session is perfect for anyone looking to stretch their marketing capacity and boost their market’s visibility—without burning out or breaking the bank.

Date: Saturday March 7, 2026
Time: TBA
Presented by: Jeff Lee, Canadian Honey Council 

As farmers’ market managers, how do you know if your honey vendors are selling their own products produced under the “make-bake-grow” rules? Recent cases in which vendors were discovered selling imported honey as their own highlight the difficulty you face. Production of authentic Canadian honey is also under assault because of the advent of adulterated and imported products, including the use of cheap sugars like corn and rice syrup. This can lead to a loss of consumer confidence, and also generate complaints by other vendors and bona-fide honey producers.

Jeff’s talk, called “Honey 101,” will give you an understanding of how to determine if a honey producer applicant meets the “make-bake-grow” rules. Using their own operation as an example, he’ll also equip you with questions you can ask your vendors, and provide a checklist of simple things to look for if you do a site visit to confirm compliance. He’ll give you examples of what is acceptable, and what is not.

Date: Saturday March 7, 2026
Time: TBA
Presented by: Jocelyn Cheung, BCAFM Membership and Marketing Coordinator

This workshop provides practical strategies for building and maintaining strong relationships with influencers to maximize brand impact. Participants will learn how to identify the right partners, create mutually beneficial collaborations, and foster long-term engagement. The session includes how to create influencer briefs, showcasing case studies from BCAFM campaigns and insights to help organizations elevate their influencer outreach and relationship management practices.

Date: Saturday March 7, 2026
Time: TBA
Presented by: Michelle Tremblay (MPowerLives)

This presentation offers strategies for managers, vendors, and board members to promote safety and inclusivity at Farmers’ Markets and the workplace. Participants will learn how to deal with bullying, manage conflicts, and foster respectful interactions through practical tools and techniques. The session clarifies the difference between bullying and mean behaviour, provides guidance for emotional regulation, and stresses leadership’s role in modelling respectful behaviour. Interactive exercises and resources will help improve market culture and support ongoing education.

Date: Saturday March 7, 2026
Time: TBA
Presented by: Imran Gill (Destination BC) and Jasmine Houle (BCAFM)

As we approach the FIFA World Cup 2026, the focus shifts to readiness. This presentation by Imran Gill (Destination BC) covers the latest updates from Destination BC and the steps being taken to maximize the tourism opportunity for the province. Discover the key initiatives designed to put every region of the province in the global spotlight, and learn what to expect as we prepare to host the world.

Following this strategic overview, Jasmine Houle (BCAFM) will translate these opportunities into actionable items with the unveiling of our 2026 marketing campaign: “Taste the World with BC Farmers’ Markets.” Discover how your farmers’ market can leverage this exciting tourism opportunity during the FIFA World Cup. Jasmine will unveil a new BCAFM toolkit which will help your organization get “soccer” ready with ideas, activities and fun ways to highlight all the culturally diverse foods and opportunities in your community.

Date: Saturday March 7, 2026
Time: TBA
Presented by: BCAFM (Farmers’ Market Nutrition Coupon Team) & Pender Island Farmers Institute Representative

Tomat is BCAFM’s point-of-sale tool designed to make coupon transactions smoother for vendors, markets, and participants in the Farmers’ Market Nutrition Coupon Program (FMNCP).

By giving vendors an easy way to process coupons on site, Tomat helps reduce errors, improves reporting, and ensures participants can shop with ease and dignity. For market managers, Tomat provides accurate data to support tracking and program evaluation, while saving time behind the scenes.

This session will introduce Tomat and explore how the program worked in Pender Island, Sicamous and Penticton. Learn what we learned, plus some ideas to resolve tricky issues. The session will have a hands-on portion where you will be able to experience the Tomat card as a vendor and participant.

Date: Sunday, March 8, 2026
Time: TBA
Presented by: Megan Jackson (Pivot HR)

Farmers’ markets are dynamic, community-driven organizations – but behind every successful market is a solid framework of policies, procedures, and compliance practices that protect the organization, support staff and volunteers, and create a safe, consistent experience for vendors and the public.

This interactive workshop will guide market managers, board members, and market leaders through the essential policies every farmers’ market organization should have in place, and what those policies need to include to remain compliant and responsive to employee and organizational needs. We’ll break down the core components of effective policy development, highlight common gaps, and walk through practical approaches to strengthening HR practices and risk management.

Participants will leave with a clearer understanding of:

• Key HR and organizational policies required for compliance in British Columbia
• Core policy elements
• How to design policies that are legally sound, practical, and aligned with the realities of seasonal and volunteer-supported environments
• Strategies for maintaining compliance as legislation evolves
• How to introduce and implement policies effectively within a farmers’ market setting

Interactive Activities

This isn’t a lecture – it’s a hands-on, collaborative session. The workshop will include:

• Group discussions on common challenges and real scenarios faced by market leaders
• Policy checklists that participants can adapt for their own organizations
• Small-group exercises focused on identifying gaps, drafting policy elements, and exploring best practices
• Peer sharing to highlight what’s working well across different markets

Participants will walk away with practical resources, increased confidence in their compliance responsibilities, and actionable steps to strengthen their market’s internal structure and support their employees and volunteers.

Date: Sunday March 8, 2026
Time: TBA
Presented by: Kate Poirier (Cedar Farmers’ Market Agricultural Society)

This Action Lab is designed for farmers’ market managers, board members, and nonprofit staff who are feeling overwhelmed by the day-to-day demands of running a market — from vendor communication and volunteer coordination to compliance, outreach, and endless administrative tasks. We’ll begin with a focused, hands-on SWOT analysis of your organization and learn to identify obstacles both internal and external. This session will guide you to dig deeper and pinpoint your real challenges with clarity. By uncovering these operational pressure points, you’ll be able to identify where smart, targeted interventions can deliver meaningful relief and free up your time and energy.

We’ll focus on the low-hanging fruit — the small, constant interruptions in your workflow that eat up time and mental energy. These are the tasks that free and low-cost AI tools are most useful for in today’s context. When we start by clearing those obstacles, we create more space to focus on the bigger-picture goals and transformations you actually want to make at your market.

Once participants have identified their key friction points, we’ll dive into a step-by-step process to build a BC Health Compliance AI Agent together. This agent is designed to instantly answer food safety questions based on your region’s health authority, using up-to- date BC CDC and regional guidelines. After building it as a group, I will demo the agent in action and then share the link so participants can access and use it themselves.

We will also explore the Vendor Bio Generator AI Agent, which is already in use in my market’s application system. This tool helps vendors transform rough notes into polished, professional bios with minimal effort. We’ll also build an internal AI Agent trained on key documents like BC farmers’ market regulations and bylaws, code of conduct, and our own Cedar Farmers Market rules, constitution, and bylaws — making it easy to quickly and securely search and reference all the important policies and guidelines in one place.

After exploring what these tools can do, we’ll shift into guided prompt writing, showing participants how to generate useful content for things like grant applications, volunteer recruitment, conflict resolution templates, or board onboarding documents — all tailored to their actual market needs.

Date: Sunday, March 8, 2026
Time: TBA
Presented by: Kim Peterson (Cedar Fundraising)

Every farmers’ market needs funding, but to raise money from the community, you need more than a wish list. You need a story that connects with your community and a strategy that makes the most of your capacity.

Join small shop fundraising expert Kim Peterson in this interactive Action Lab where we will walk through a guided process to build a fundraising strategy rooted in your market’s unique purpose and needs. Starting with just two questions—what are your funding needs and why is our work important?—we’ll work together to identify a message that will motivate supporters and then leverage those messages with a practical fundraising plan.

You’ll leave with a clear picture of your priorities, tools to communicate your unique story, and a strategy you can implement season after season.