We were lucky to catch up with Felicia Vestal recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Felicia thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?

Yessie and I started this market as we were looking for an outlet to bring something new to the area. We wanted a safe place and We always had a mission of being a family. We want to get to know all of our vendors. If you want to know about their lives and keep up with them. We wanted to give a chance for the Underdog or the person that wasn’t getting into other markets a chance to start somewhere. In that we did fine family. We have seen relationships blossom and children be born and Vendors get married. We have seen Vendors leave and go onto opening stores and you feel proud to know you are a part of that story.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

We are the Orlando Vegan market. I started this market in August 2019. It was started as there was a need and nothing like it in the area. A group of friends had met and we came up with this idea and we went for it. We promoted for about a month online and I remember standing In the courtyard about 10 minutes before the event started and we were all so nervous and wondering if anyone would come. Well they showed up. It was our busiest market to date and was shoulder to shoulder. We had vendors sell out in an hour and we were not expecting this at all. Probably one of the Proudest moment I had in my career.

We were the first all vegan market with continuous dates in central Florida.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Covid hit everyone a little bit differently. We were almost a year into starting the vegan market when everything changed. Being that we had a location at a outdoor venue we try to help as many vendors as possible. We allowed for this to be a pick up location. When returning the vegan market after Covid we took a lot of precaution has many places in the area we’re being criticized for trying to get back to normal. Just in the recent year we started booking at our full capacity. I think this pandemic really showed us how much we did need a safe space.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media the good and the bad. Coming up on 17,000 followers in the past three years has been a struggle. We have never paid for social media so we grew the platform platonically. Social media is a job and its own and very time consuming. It is also the make it or break it of a business . Either you post too much or you don’t post enough. You don’t post the correct picture that someone likes. You post some thing that’s misspelled or you tag the wrong business. It is a 24/7 job. Social media is changing every day. How the platforms look how the algorithms are put together. People want real’s and stories now and don’t care about your post.

Our advice is just to keep going with it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.verandaevents.com
• Instagram: Orlandoveganmarket
• Facebook: Orlandoveganmarket
• Twitter: Orlandoveganmkt
• Yelp: Orlandoveganmarket

Image Credits
Felicia and Yessi