At the September event, vendors will pay $150 each for a booth, where they’ll sell small plates for around $2 to $8 apiece. Attendees will pay a $5 entry fee if they pre-register online at yumtum.ca, or $10 at the door. The Brickworks location has a capacity of about 1,200 to 1,500 people if they're standing, less if they're sitting (though Ms. Aviles doesn't anticipate using more than about one-third or one-half of the room).
A special-events liquor license will let foodsters have a spot of local beer or wine to wash down their goat cheese.
Vendors will first have to pass a tryout stage, a “sample day” where they’ll display their wares for the co-organizers, who will pick the standouts. Those that qualify will receive some education on food handling and safety, says Ms. Aviles.
There will be strict rules. Almost all the food preparation will take place in Evergreen’s commercial, fully inspected events kitchen – a key condition of keeping the market within municipal and provincial public-health regulations. Vendors with access to an offsite commercial kitchen may use it, but most won’t have that luxury. Either Ms. Aviles or another organizer with a city food handler’s certificate must be present in the Evergreen kitchen while every dish is being prepared. All ingredients must come from approved distributors, says Suzanne Lychowyd, healthy environments manager at Toronto Public Health.
“We will probably have inspectors on site when they start initially, for the first few times,” she says. “There hasn’t been anybody that has done [a market] in this fashion.”
Guy Rawlings, the 30-year-old former head chef of Brockton General, hopes to be a vendor. He isn’t worried about the logistics about cooking in shifts alongside 30-odd others.
“You don’t even have to use heat to prepare food,” he points out.
There will be chefs who won’t make the underground market cut. Nothing prepared off-site, unless in a commercial kitchen, will be allowed. That means nothing cured, pickled, smoked or brined. (Ms. Aviles hopes to eventually plan an early prep session for such treatments in later markets, to be held monthly.)
“I had a woman who [wanted to sell] pancetta cured in her basement,” she shrugs. “We can’t do it.”
The best part for the wannabe chefs? They’ll get to keep 100 per cent of their earnings after they pay their vendor fee.
Ms. Aviles is using her savings and some funds from her parents to pay for it all: the space, the kitchen – even complimentary shuttle buses to out-of-the-way Evergreen from Broadview station for attendees. Five per cent of her profits will go back to Evergreen.
What if her market becomes a cheap business incubator – a launching pad for successful restaurants that could one day surpass the market itself? Ms. Aviles smiles.
“Then my dream has come true,” she says. “That’s exactly what I hope it will be. That’s what San Francisco was. There’s a lot of up-and-coming talent that will come out of this.”
Special to The Globe and Mail
