Lou Baddiley with son Keagan Baddiley who is looking forward to being part of the children's stall at the inaugral Rotorua Farmer's Market tomorrow. Photo/Ben Fraser
Lou Baddiley with son Keagan Baddiley who is looking forward to being part of the children's stall at the inaugral Rotorua Farmer's Market tomorrow. Photo/Ben Fraser
Keagan Baddiley is looking forward to being part of the children's stall at the inaugural Rotorua Farmers' Market.
"I joined because it sounded lots of fun and I've never done anything like it. It's another way to make new friends and meet people," the 10-year-old said.
The Lynmore Primary Schoolpupil will be one of four children running the stall.
Keagan said he was approached by a family friend to be part of tomorrow's event, the first farmers' market in the City Focus. They will be selling lemons, grapefruit and silverbeet.
Keagan's mother, Lou Baddiley, said he was interested in cooking and baking.
She said the rules for the stall were the children must be school-aged and all produce had to be home grown. Products such as cakes and jam were not allowed unless they were made in a commercial kitchen.
"I think it ultimately teaches them about enterprise, it's a real-life situation," said Mrs Baddiley.
As the family don't grow anything on their Lynmore property Mrs Baddiley said they had to "scrounge around on Facebook" to come up with produce.
Lou Baddiley with son Keagan Baddiley who is looking forward to being part of the children's stall at the inaugral Rotorua Farmer's Market tomorrow. Photo/Ben Fraser
"Random people have gone 'oh, come to my house and help yourself to grapefruit' so it's quite neat that the community has been involved."
The group will be meeting today for the first time to run through skills such as cash handling, basic customer service and how to engage with people.
Keagan and his mother have talked about different situations that might arise while working at the market.
If someone has been waiting a long time to be served Keagan has been practising his line "thank you for your patience, how might I help you?".
Rotorua Lakes Council project manager Brigitte Nelson said the council was excited about the market and believed it would be a success.
"It's going to be fun. We're excited to offer this to the community. There will be lovely, seasonal produce and the selection on offer will grow as the weather improves."
Mrs Nelson said it was a great idea to have children run a stall and she thought it was a great entrepreneurial opportunity for them.
Those interested in being on the children's stall need to book with Mrs Nelson.
While he is unsure if he will continue to help out at the stall after this weekend, both Keagan and Mrs Baddiley said they were looking forward to having a farmers' market in Rotorua.
"It's really exciting. From what I gather it's going to be best of the best of local produce ... that will be the cool thing about the market going forward, it's all about eating and buying stuff that's in season," said Mrs Baddiley.
