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After a year of record-breaking sales and visitors in 2017, the Milwaukee Public Market has done it again.
The Third Ward’s precursor to the food hall craze that has swept Milwaukee recently announced on Monday that last year’s total vendor sales and customer visits increased by 10% over 2017. Total vendor sales rose from about $16.5 million to just over $18 million. Customer visits rose from 1.6 million to nearly 1.8 million.
These new figures bolster the market’s growing position as one of the most sought-after attractions for both tourists and locals. The public market also announced on Monday that it was listed third in number of attendees of area attractions, trailing only Potawatomi Casino and the Milwaukee Brewers.
“It has been our goal to cultivate a food-centric placemaking experience like none other in the region, which I’m proud to say is now a reality,” Paul Schwartz, Milwaukee Public Market executive director, said in a press release. “We’ve become a hub of social and economic activity, where regional residents and national travelers seek us out as a culinary destination. I’m enormously proud and grateful to our vendors, loyal customer-base and the hundreds of workers who are employed throughout the market that make the experience what it is today.”
The market’s year-over-year growth is especially impressive for a business that was on the verge of collapse in 2007, before operations were handed over to the Historic Third Ward Business Improvement District. “When we took it over, it was three weeks from closing,” Historic Third Ward BID chairman Ron San Felippo told BizTimes in June. “We were plenty scared. The first year was the hairiest. We had just taken a place that no one wanted to buy anything from.”
Things sure seem to have changed since.
