Smorgasburg DC, the weekly outdoor food festival that arrived in Navy Yard earlier this summer with plenty of fanfare, is on a break for the rest of the month because of the extreme summer heat and an expected dip in attendance.
As first reported by Eater DC, it’ll resume Sept. 7. Organizers plan on switching up things a bit by launching food events and debuting about a half dozen new vendors from Baltimore, Virginia, and locally, says Sophia Florendo-Stevens, manager of the D.C. market.
“It’s a tough call because we don’t want to lose momentum, but we do want to be considerate of the real-life conditions, especially since it’s an every-week event,” Florendo-Stevens says of the decision to go on hiatus.
Vendors learned the news in a July 24 email from Florendo-Stevens. In the email, which has been provided to DCist, she says “soaring temperatures making our venue vulnerable, the city emptying out in August, and tourists not yet a substantial part of our audience” were part of the reason for the decision. The email came less than a week after Smorgasburg DC canceled the July 20 market, citing high temperatures. With highs in the upper 90s, that Saturday ended up being the hottest day of the year thus far.
Florendo-Stevens also says that even without the temperatures, August might have been slow anyway, as the city empties out for people’s vacations and the Congressional recess.
Smorgasburg is a mix of smorgasbord and Williamsburg, Brooklyn where the company unleashed its original outdoor food market in 2011. Today, it runs other ones in Los Angeles, Brazil, and Japan.
The D.C. iteration features between 30 and 40 vendors at a time who are mostly people of color, half of them women. Some are food incubators and others have standalone restaurants. Vendors pay $250 a week for space at Tingey Plaza, and are also responsible for covering their own equipment and labor costs.
In June, Smorgasburg co-founder Eric Demby told DCist that the Williamsburg market fields around 100 vendors who draw roughly 20,000 visitors every Saturday from May through November.
When Smorgasburg returns to D.C. next year after its first season, it’ll open in the spring, Florendo-Stevens says, just like it does in New York City.
Before launching Smorgasburg DC, organizers had hoped for the event to start in April of this year, but it took some time to find a space and secure the proper licenses, Florendo-Stevens says.
When it finally opened June 15, the D.C. spinoff drew enormous crowds, but things have slowed down considerably since then. On her best day at Smorgasburg, Rabia Kamara, owner of the four-year-old Ruby Scoops says she made between $1,600 and $1,700 selling her ice cream, and the worst she’s ever done was make less than $700.
“I think the first few weeks were amazing and then it kind of dipped,” Kamara says. “My hope is that when we come back in September, we are super busy.”
The break means that her four staffers who worked the Ruby Scoops space at Smorgasburg lose out on the chance to make money there—they were working 10 hours every weekend and making $14 an hour. Kamara’s staff is used to being seasonal, she says, but they aren’t used to being “on and off.”
Florendo-Stevens acknowledges the crowds have slowed down, but she’s hoping the cooler weather, new vendors she’s in discussions with, and special events give them a reason to come back.
The special events lineup includes a foodie Halloween costume contest, a barbecue week, and a day of vegetables.
“Hopefully it’ll be 20 degrees cooler,” Florendo-Stevens says. “Hopefully we can all wear jeans.”
Previously:
Giant Outdoor Food Market Smorgasburg Is Taking Over Navy Yard This Summer
