BELLEVUE, Ky. — Sunday kicked off the first of a summer set of farmers markets at Bellevue Beach Park. Director of marketing and communications with the city, Melissa Morandi, said this has been in the works for months to line up vendors and local entrepreneurs. She said the city hasn’t seen a farmers market in about a decade and there was a need to show these entrepreneurs some love.
“We were inspired because we thought, ‘why leave Bellevue to go to the farmers market when we could have one right here in our very own beach park?’” Morandi said.
One of the vendors this weekend was Kiara Russell. She operates Juicing With Kiwi. Her business kicked off as folks watched her weight loss journey online.
“I would literally just go live and show people how to juice and our customer base literally watched me lose weight, and that’s how we birthed our three-day juice reboot, our cleanse, and then it just kind of grew from there,” Russell said.
Her business hits the road at different farmers markets, like this Bellevue one, to get to more community members.
“This is what people want — they want natural, they want local and I was also able to buy wholesale from the farmers,” Russell said.
Russell is one entrepreneur supporting others. She and other vendors said the community support has also been great at this market.
“Literally this environment is a dream if we’re talking farmers markets. It’s an amazing turnout and we will definitely be back,” she said.
Morandi said the next farmers market in Bellevue takes place August 21.