The Market Day Checklist: From Setup To Teardown

It's 3:40pm, twenty minutes before doors. Stall C7 hasn't arrived, the food row has one socket for three vendors, and the sky over the carpark has gone grey. The vendor group has 61 unread messages, and nobody knows who has the cable ties.

Every one of those has a fix, and every fix gets written down before the day, not invented at 3:40pm.

This is the market day checklist we'd use, from the box you pack the night before to the note you write the morning after. Where the day sits in the weeks of planning before it is in how to run a market or fair.

We'll follow one invented event: a 40-stall Mid-Autumn market in the outdoor plaza of a heartland mall, open 4pm to 10pm on a Saturday. Entry is free, and there's a ticketed lantern-painting workshop at 5pm and 7pm with 20 seats each. It isn't a real event or a customer, so swap in your own numbers.

What Goes In The Organizer's Box?

The organizer's box is one crate, packed the night before, holding everything you'd otherwise run back to the car for. Ours holds:

1. Paper: three copies of the stall list with phone numbers, the floor plan at A3, venue contacts, and your permit.
2. Marking: stall number cards, masking tape, a marker, cable ties, and gaffer tape for cables across a walkway.
3. Power: two spare extension reels, a spare power strip, and power banks.
4. First aid: a stocked kit, an ice pack, sunscreen, and two cases of water for volunteers.
5. Cash: a lockable cash box with the float, and a printed PayNow QR for your own sales.
6. Weather: plastic sheeting, spare tent weights, a mop and two wet-floor signs.
7. Cleaning: heavy bin bags, a broom and a dustpan.
8. Lost and found: a labeled bag and a notebook to log what comes in.

Anything borrowed goes back in the box, not into a pocket.

Your Market Day Checklist, Hour By Hour

A market day checklist works best as a run of show: a timed list of what happens and who owns it, sent to volunteers the night before. Here's ours:

Volunteers arrive an hour before the first vendor, to tape cards and find sockets before 40 people ask.

How Should Vendor Load-In Work?

Vendor load-in should run in waves, by block, through one check-in desk, with a hard close 30 minutes before doors. Forty vendors arriving at once means 40 cars fighting for a loading bay that fits about four.

Every vendor's confirmation gives a 45-minute arrival window, the loading bay address, the parking rule (unload, then move the car) and their stall number. Food stalls come first, so their power and water get tested early. Their own packing is in the vendor's market stall checklist.

At the desk, a volunteer ticks the vendor off the printed list and points to the stall on the A3 map. Put the desk by the loading bay, not the market entrance.

Where each block sits is the plan's job, covered in laying out your fair floor plan. On the day, your job is making the tape on the ground match it.

Signs, Power And Water Before Doors Open

Signs, power and water get one last check in the 20 minutes before doors, the last time fixing them is cheap.

Signs. A banner on the street side, a printed map at each entrance, an "Info, First Aid, Lost And Found" sign at the desk, and arrows to the toilets. The permit goes up near the entrance; which one you need is in our Temporary Fair Permit guide.

Power. Check each vendor is on the socket you assigned, every extension reel is fully unwound (a coiled reel under load heats up), and cables across walkways are taped flat. The kettle nobody mentioned is the one that trips the circuit at 7pm.

Water. Food stalls need to know where the tap is and where wastewater goes. Ask the mall beforehand, because the answer usually isn't the nearest drain.

Who Does What On The Day?

Every volunteer needs one job and one area, written down before the day. For 40 stalls and a workshop, we'd plan on eight people on shift:

• Lead (1): you. Holds the vendor phone and makes every call on weather, disputes and closing.
• Load-in marshals (2): one at the loading bay, one at the desk. They run teardown too.
• Floor runners (2): walk the rows, fix cables and signs. One is the first aider.
• Info desk (1): questions, lost and found, the cash box.
• Workshop host (1): checks tickets and runs both sessions.
• Floater (1): covers breaks, so nobody misses dinner.

A problem posted in the group chat gets 40 opinions; a problem sent to the vendor phone gets one answer.

First Aid And Lost Property

Both belong at the info desk, because visitors go to the same table for both.

For first aid, name a volunteer who has done a course, ask mall security where the nearest AED is, and write 995 (SCDF's number for life-threatening emergencies) on the volunteer sheet. A 4pm outdoor start means heat, so make the runners drink water.

Log lost property with the time and place found. A lost child stays at the desk with one volunteer while the lead calls mall security, not the group chat. At close, hand unclaimed items to mall security and note who took them; if they won't take something, the police have Found Property Dropboxes at Neighbourhood Police Centres and Posts.

Checking Tickets At The Workshop

Check-in needs one person, one phone and one re-entry rule, decided before the line forms. At our market only the workshop is ticketed, so check-in happens at the workshop corner, 15 minutes before each session.

For 20 seats, scanning QR codes in a phone browser and ticking names off a printed list both work. In BookASquare, a ticket scanned again is still admitted, and the scanner shows when it was first checked in, so a parent who stepped out to fetch a child isn't turned away. A refunded ticket shows as do not admit.

How Much Cash Float Do You Need?

About S$200 in small notes covers an organizer at a 40-stall market, as long as vendors bring their own change. Ours is 20 x S$2, 12 x S$5 and 10 x S$10, enough for walk-up workshop seats at S$15 and a few vendors who need to break a S$50.

Two people count the float in and out, and both sign the slip.

What If It Rains?

Your rain plan is a written rule for what triggers a pause, where people go and who decides, sent to vendors a week before. The Meteorological Service Singapore says short afternoon thunderstorms are common, so a 4pm outdoor start needs one.

1. Before the day: ask the mall which covered area visitors can wait in. Put "weights on every tent leg" in the vendor info.
2. On the day: subscribe to lightning alerts for the plaza in NEA's myENV app. According to the Ministry of Sustainability and the Environment, it alerts you when cloud-to-ground lightning is detected within 6km, or thundery showers are forecast there in the next two hours.
3. When the alert fires or you hear thunder: vendors cover stock, and everyone goes inside the mall. A tent isn't shelter from lightning.
4. After it passes: we'd wait 30 minutes after the last thunder, then mop the walkways before reopening.
5. If you call it off: the lead decides, calls vendors from the list, and posts one message in the group.

Say in the vendor info, before anyone pays, whether stall fees come back if weather closes the market.

When Things Go Wrong: The Rush, No-Shows And Disputes

Problems on the day go quickly when the rule was written beforehand and only the lead applies it.

The Evening Peak

At a Mid-Autumn market the peak is 7:30pm to 9pm, when families arrive after dinner carrying lanterns. Put one runner at the main entrance and one at the workshop corner, and ask vendors to keep stock and stools inside their stall line. Check with the mall whether lit candle lanterns are allowed; if it's battery only, say so on the poster.

No-Shows

When load-in closes at 3:30pm, call each missing vendor once. No answer by 3:45pm, and the gap gets filled: the neighbors spread out, or a waitlisted vendor who lives nearby takes it.

Disputes And Complaints

A display creeping over the stall line or a speaker that's too loud gets settled at the stall, against the floor plan, never in the group chat. For visitors, fix what's yours, like a blocked aisle or a missing sign. A complaint about a product is between the buyer and the vendor; you can introduce them, but you don't refund their sale.

Teardown: Leave The Plaza The Way You Found It

Teardown is done when the plaza looks the way the mall lent it and their staff have walked it with you.

1. 9:45pm: last call. No packing before then.
2. 10:00pm: vendors pack stock, then tents. A car enters the bay only once its stall is packed.
3. 10:30pm: vendors take their own rubbish; volunteers sweep and bag the rest.
4. 11:00pm: peel up every strip of tape and every stall card.
5. 11:30pm: walk the plaza with mall staff, photograph it, and note any damage.

Next morning, reconcile the float, return what you borrowed and write a short "what broke" note. Ours would say the food row needed one more socket.

What To Do Next

This week, write your run of show and volunteer list, and pack the box the night before.

BookASquare handles bookings before the day and check-in at the door, but it doesn't run your floor or offer wristbands, box-office hardware or cashless payments, so a large convention needing those should look elsewhere. If you'd like stall bookings and workshop tickets in one place, see how BookASquare works for organizers.