Barcelona holds first plenary session to develop its 2015-2025 Strategic Plan for City Markets

A plenary session held as part of ongoing strategic planning at the end of February already turned up some initial conclusions.

The first plenary session held as part of IMMB's Strategic Plan for Markets has already turned up some initial findings that will be analyzed and discussed throughout the year during other sessions. However, participants have already agreed to propose, for example, that there will be a change in markets' open times: opening at different times in the morning and extending opening times in the evenings, both to avoid losing customers and to gain others that for work or family reasons don't shop in city markets because when they want to go shopping markets are closed.

They also want markets to be places where one can buy and taste some of the products (tasting), maybe opening certain nights, so that markets can promote sales and become places for leisure activities where citizens have a role.So they are markets to sell food but also places for socialising, places for leisure activities and even training courses. In this scenario, the market and stall holders became advisors about what to buy almost like a nutritionist for customers. However, these stallholders need to commit too.

Sustainable

Each market needs a maintenance plans for its facilities, both to ensure better management of costs and to take on greater co-responsibility between all parties involved. Other proposals include energy self-sufficiency in order to avoid wasting resources.Other objectives include encouraging stallholders to offer more information about the products they offer their customers, with labelling to promote and increase public information for quality assurance and profits for stall owners. Other issues brought up during the plenary was the importance of getting field fresh local produce into markets, establishing new distribution channels.

Powerful motors

In what is a very competitive business environment and taking into account the effects of legislative changes affecting markets, one conclusion is that market traders should enhance their business vision by providing them training. The administration, for its part, must be bolder to address threats to markets to ensure that they remain fully competitive. Another conclusion was  that markets should rethink the types of products they sell to concentrate more on higher quality produce and lower qualities, leaving the mid-range quality to other commercial areas of the city.But not all the proposals would be useful for all markets, which means we should design different plans depending on the types of markets we find today.