'Good food, good people and a good meeting place.' Soda City Market marks milestone

Soda City Market has its origin in the All Local Farmers Market.

When it began in November 2005 with six vendors on the sidewalk in front of the Gervais & Vine restaurant in the Vista, who would have thought that the idea of a Saturday market in downtown Columbia would have blossomed into what it is today — a main attraction that brings thousands of people to the heart of Columbia every weekend?

Or that next month, the weekly market will hold its 300th Main Street market.

Launched in 2005 by Emile DeFelice and Kristian Niemi, the All Local Farmers Market specialized in locally grown produce and meats and artisan food products. Some of the original vendors included Heather's Artisan Bakery, Wil-Moore Farms (eggs, beef, chicken, lamb and goat meat), Floral & Hardy (fresh cut flowers) and DeFelice's Caw Caw Creek Farm (pork products). The market alternated locations between Gervais & Vine, Rosewood Market and the former Yo Burrito site (at the corner of Woodrow and Devine streets) before settling in at 711 Whaley.

The timing of the market's creation was just before the farm-to-table movement took off in the Midlands.

“We tapped into something people missed," DeFelice said. "It’s the Cracker Barrel effect ... people like to get back what’s been taken away. So when you go into Cracker Barrel — all of our grandparents’ homes are long gone, the stuff is long gone — you see remnants of that. Farm equipment on the wall, checkers. That’s why Cracker Barrel is so popular, because they evoke that time in our country or in our life or whatever.

“Markets are a natural thing. It’s a gathering, it’s trade. It’s an ancient thing. Congregation is a natural, human thing … and it would have happened eventually, somewhere, and we would have gotten back what we lost. I just happen to be the first person here.”

The market at Whaley lasted about five years. Adding food vendors and craftsmen, and with Niemi serving more than 300 breakfasts/brunches each Saturday, the market became a popular spot for shoppers and grazers. It wasn't long before the market outgrew the space.

Enter Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin.

A frequent market attendee, Benjamin approached DeFelice in 2011 about moving the market to Main Street.

"There was something special happening there," says Benjamin about the Whaley location, "but it was constrained by the space."

The mayor believes that the city is a living organism and that its downtown belongs to everybody. Soda City Market provided an opportunity to reintroduce what a vibrant downtown could look like to residents and visitors.

In preparation for the move, DeFelice looked at a few short videos that had been shot randomly along Main Street over a series of Saturdays. The videos showed that there was almost no foot traffic, and plenty of unused parking spots. But the potential for growth was there.

Soda City Market opened in Boyd Plaza, in front of the Columbia Museum of Art, in 2012 with 26 vendors.

At first, the going was a little rough. Some of the Whaley Street vendors didn’t make the move to Main Street — nor did the customers. Social media sites for the rebranded market had to be built from scratch with the new name, and people had to be convinced to take a chance on downtown.

Slowly but surely, the market caught on. Today, Soda City has expanded to three blocks on Main Street with a roster of more than 150 vendors and thousands of shoppers every Saturday morning.

"The most interesting aspect of the market's success," says Benjamin, "is that people said it wouldn't make it."

Not only did it work, but the mayor says the success of Soda City Market is an example of what happens when a community believes in itself.

According to market representatives, Soda City Market generates more than $6 million in city-taxed gross sales per year, contributes to more than 5,000 individual paychecks and creates thousands of business licenses.

While Floral & Hardy is the only vendor remaining from the original market, the Main Street location has proved to be a support or launchpad for local businesses.

• Indah Coffee began at the market and now has a brick-and-mortar shop in Cottontown, off North Main Street.

• The Peanut Man began selling boiled peanuts at the Whaley location and now has three stores in the Columbia area.

• Mary's Arepa's became so popular on Saturdays serving Colombian food that the owners decided to try a brick-and-mortar restaurant.

Another indicator of success, the market has spun off a Soda City event company that handles planning and execution of special themed markets — such as Oktoberfest and the Soda City Yard Sale — and Soda City Friends, a nonprofit arm that coordinates fundraising events such as the Gervais Street Bridge Dinner in October and Brookland Beach Bash at the West Columbia Riverwalk Park & Amphitheater on July 7.

DeFelice credits Benjamin with the idea for the bridge dinner.

The mayor was at a U.S. Conference of Mayors in Sacramento, Calif., when he attended a 500-seat dinner on the middle of the bridge connecting Sacramento and West Sacramento.

In Columbia, Benjamin saw the Congaree River not as something that divided Columbia from Cayce and West Columbia, but something that connected them. His idea that the three municipalities, and Richland and Lexington counties, could become stronger if they worked together and envisioned themselves as one region could be represented by a dinner on a connecting bridge.

The picturesque Gervais Street Bridge seemed like the logical spot.

The first dinner took place in 2015 with proceeds of $18,000 going to benefit Congaree Riverkeeper, Canoeing for Kids and Harvest Hope Food Bank. Since 2015, the Gervais Street Bridge Dinner has raised more than $125,000. Soda City Friends has given more than $325,000 to local charities.

DeFelice's "greatest joy" from his involvement with Soda City is the opportunity to "be a part of something much, much larger."

He points to the international component of the Saturday market — vendors at the market represent more than 20 nationalities — and of the whole Columbia area.

"People do not come to the market simply for the product but for a relationship with the vendor, with their neighbor, with whoever they want," says DeFelice. "It’s the town square.

“We didn’t invent anything new at all, we just brought back what was proven to be a winner … good food, good people and a good meeting place.”

This story was originally published June 26, 2018 at 2:31 PM with the headline "'Good food, good people and a good meeting place.' Soda City Market marks milestone."