New monthly night market coming to downtown Louisville aims to give boost to small businesses

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A monthly night market coming to downtown Louisville hopes to give small businesses the chance to reach out to new customers in a different way.

Brittiney Griffin is stepping out of her brick and mortar store, Pocket Change, on Baxter Avenue and taking her sales to Fourth Street in downtown Louisville.

"If we go to the community and show them what we have, then maybe that will draw more people to us," Griffin said.

Louisville night market — Brittiney Griffin owns Pocket Change on Baxter Avenue. She will be selling some of her items at the night market's first event on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2022. (WDRB photo)
Joel Schipper

The Louisville Independent Business Alliance and Louisville Downtown Partnership are teaming up for what will be a new, free market held every second Thursday of each month along South Fourth Street between Guthrie and West Chestnut streets.

"It's very important to advocate for small businesses, especially after COVID and in downtown," said Rebecca Fleischaker, executive director of the Louisville Downtown Partnership. "We know that they are suffering and have had a hard way to go the last couple of years."

Griffin said some of the momentum to help small businesses has started to go down.

"It was just like, everybody was like pro 'we got to help, we got to help, we got to help,' and now everything is just kind of slowed down, so we got to find a way to generate that traffic back," she said.

While the first night market is taking place on South Fourth Street this Thursday, Oct. 13, organizers said that may not always be the case. If it gets bigger, it'll cut down Guthrie Street, which may happen for the holiday night market scheduled for Dec. 8.

"It's another nice avenue for food trucks, music, more booths," said Fleischaker. "If we grow this the way I think it can grow, it would be a really great place to do it."

The market will run from 4-8 p.m. and will feature nearly 30 small business vendors from all over the city.

Leaders with the Louisville Downtown Partnership said they wanted to shift focus from more than just Fourth Street Live by looking south a few blocks.

"Fourth Street, it has been kind of dead down there. So it will revive that back down there and bring more money to Louisville, right, and have a shop within ourselves is vital for local communities to actually experience that," Griffin said.

For businesses who rely on web traffic for sales, the night markets will be a way for their customers to see their products in person, possibly for the first time, before a sale.

"You have your people from social media, of course, but a lot of times you have 50 million likes and no one is showing up, right? So you have to be able to get people into the space so the businesses can continue to thrive," said Griffin.

South Fourth Street will close to vehicles between Guthrie and West Chestnut streets. The holiday market on Dec. 8 will be the last of the year. Organizers said there are 30 booths available to be reserved. If interested in participating, click here for more information and to register.

Below is a list of businesses registered to participate in this week's market.