Boston Public Market is still finding its way

Over time, the market came to allow lemons. Other concessions followed. It gradually allowed more non-food vendors, positioning itself as a business incubator for jewelry-makers, artists, even a cactus shop.

Wander the halls today, and there are still crowds at lunch hour. But there are far fewer farms selling food. There’s only one produce stall, no cheesemonger, and no meat vendor. If you want to bring home a complete meal, you’ll need to make another stop.

A decade in, the BPM sits at the intersection of several economic challenges: Vulnerable local food systems. Downtown’s fragile recovery. Constantly shifting consumer demands.

And despite the original vision, the market has never quite settled on what it is. Nor has it ever broken even.

It lost $465,657 in 2024 despite paying no rent, and has received $1 million in state subsidies over the past two years. Vendor sales are still just 80 percent of what they were pre-pandemic, and the market’s foot traffic remains down some 30 percent from 2019.

So last month, when longtime CEO Cheryl Cronin announced she would step down at the end of the year, it sparked questions about what new leadership might bring to this place that launched with so much promise.

A good start, said chef Avery Perry, who has worked as a pasta maker at BPM for a decade, would be a clear vision.

“I know the market is on a mission,” he said. “I don’t know what it is.”

After more than a decade of planning, BPM opened in the summer of 2015 with 37 vendors, and significant support from the state, which kicked in about $8.5 million to help its launch and offered an essentially free long-term lease.

The main goal back then, said real estate attorney Don Wiest, who chaired BPM’s board for seven years, was to create a year-round home for farmers, fishermen, and other food entrepreneurs to connect with customers. Its stalls offered single-herd cheeses, charcuterie from New England-raised hogs, and honey culled from an on-site hive that housed 12,000 bees.

But it was always envisioned as more than just a place to grab food.

“A public market is a crossroads for a community,” Wiest said.

With that ambition, Wiest said, came conflicting goals. No one wanted another Quincy Market-style food court, but rather food access for underserved communities and more gourmet items than what’s sold next door at Haymarket. Meanwhile, the easiest customers to serve were the downtown lunch crowd, who bypassed locally foraged mushrooms for banh mi sandwiches, and debates raged about whether precious space should be devoted to more seating.

“It fairly quickly became clear that there were going to be ongoing challenges,” Cronin recalled in a recent interview.

One early example: citrus. Chris Kurth owns Siena Farms, which has been in the market since the start. At the outset, he was team No Lemons.

“I wanted to stick to our guns as strictly local and regional,” he recalled. But relaxing the citrus rule served customers better, he acknowledged. Today, he says the market is the most profitable part of his operation, which includes a 50-acre farm in Sudbury and a South End storefront.

“If it weren’t for the BPM and our sales there, we would not still be in business today,” he said.

The same goes for prepared foods, which were initially discouraged but have since become a mainstay for vendors like Red’s Best Seafood, which peddles sushi, lobster rolls, and grab-and-go items alongside fresh fish.

“I don’t believe that Red’s Best could have been successful,” without that, said founder Jared Auerbach.

Today, Cronin points back to the great citrus debate as a metaphor for the market’s evolution. And Boston’s food ecosystem has changed around it, from the rise of food delivery into a trillion-dollar business, to the emergence of downtown food halls like High Street Place and Hub Hall, to more locally grown food — the original reason for Boston Public Market’s being — getting sold at mainstream supermarkets.

These are mostly good things for consumers, Cronin says, but they reflect a fundamental truth for any retail operation: The goal is to sell stuff, not curate a produce museum.

“When it comes to grocery, the number one thing for people is convenience,” she said. “If you can go to one place and grab your fresh local blueberries and toilet paper, that’s what you’re going to do as a consumer.”

That one-stop-shop evolution continues today. This month, Red’s Best seafood stand added meat to its wares, while Kurth said 80 to 90 percent of his shoppers are lower-income people using the state’s Healthy Incentives Program.

Still, said Claire Cheney, founder of the Curio Spice Co., many customers seem confused about what to make of the place.

“I can’t really put my finger on it,” said Cheney, who opened a stall last year. “There’s a heartbeat that’s missing from the market.”

From the outset, Cronin said, the market has tried to break even. And indeed, during its first five years, it was tiptoeing toward the black. But the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out most of those gains, Cronin said.

Some of those problems are not unique to Boston, said Kelly Verel, co-executive director of the Project for Public Spaces. Many urban markets saw foot traffic fall during the pandemic. Rising costs of food and labor are universal issues. And these days, it’s far harder to run a farm.

“It’s a cutthroat environment,” she said.

But BPM also faced challenges of its own. The relatively young nonprofit had little reserves to draw from during the pandemic, Cronin said, even as it subsidized rents — which are typically a percentage of sales — to help vendors stay afloat. The years-long Government Center Garage construction project next door didn’t help foot traffic.

That’s partly why the state agreed to pony up $1 million over the past two fiscal years to keep the market solvent, said State Representative Aaron Michlewitz, with $375,000 more proposed for this year.

“I think the market is in a position to really take off,” said Michlewitz, who represents the North End and downtown. “It’s weathered itself through some difficult financial storms.”

Cronin said the BPM is on track to anthem 2 million visitors this year and is two years into a strategic plan that’s focused on building revenue, even if that means working to “pivot” unsuccessful vendors “away from the market.”

Those pivots, though, have led several current and former vendors to feel like they’re being edged out.

“It’s a toxic environment and a lot of vendors are leaving,” said Philip Frattaroli, a North End restaurateur who owns The Pine Bar, and has been in a protracted legal negotiation about the terms of his lease. ”A lot of people have been pushed out in the past year.”

They’re vendors like Gerald Croteau, who sells cheeseboards and bowls at American Stonecraft and did well in the market’s early years. He left during COVID, but returned last year. Soon after, he and his workers began getting headaches, which he blamed on smoke and grease fumes from the donut fryer at neighboring Red Apple Farm.

He complained to the building inspector and fire marshal, and then posted a video on Instagram about his concerns. (Al Rose, who owns Red Apple Farm with his wife Nancy, says there has “never been a compliance factor with that machine.”) Soon after, Croteau’s lease was terminated, with the market citing “false and disparaging public statements.”

Cronin said Croteau did not contact her or the Roses before posting online. “We would hope and expect that if you want to make a complaint about another vendor, we do it in a way that’s professional and courteous,” she said.

Another disgruntled former vendor is Giulio Caperchi, whose Seven Hills Pasta Co. was, until recently, BPM’s largest tenant, with both a stall in the market and a factory next door. As a North End resident, he loved visiting the BPM with his family.

“We moved in brimming with ideas,” he said.

But over time, he said, that enthusiasm waned. BPM staff pushed back against his efforts to promote events and host classes. Several market tenants told the Globe that Caperchi and Cronin had heated arguments in all-vendor meetings.

“There is no sense of shared destiny for the market,” Caperchi said. “We have been treated in a demeaning way multiple times, and many vendors have simply given up on participating.“

The market terminated Caperchi’s lease last year, which Cronin said was part of the strategy to increase revenue. Seven Hills’ space has since been rented to a new tenant who’ll pay twice as much. Caperchi left last month.

Generally, said Nancy Rose, the market’s community of vendors supports one another, but these frustrations reflect a larger change since the pandemic.

“There’s been so much turnover,” she said. ”We haven’t really coalesced again.”

The challenge immediately, said Andy Kendall, whose Henry P. Kendall Foundation is one of BPM’s longest backers, is to create a distinct reason for customers to keep coming.

“Every opening is an opportunity to go back to your mission and say what’s missing,” he said.

And figuring that out will immediately be the job of whoever replaces Cronin. As she gets ready to retire and prepares for the market’s annual Harvest event next week, that responsibility is still very best of mind.

“The mission only survives if the retail model is thriving,” Cronin said. “If you don’t have a market, you don’t have a mission.”

Janelle Nanos can be reached at janelle.nanos@globe.com. Follow her @janellenanos.