YAKIMA, Wash. — The corner of Summitview and Tenth Avenue in Yakima was bustling with people enjoying the beautiful day at a Mother’s Day market. But before the market, the Yakima Health District hosted a seminar to show the process to become one of those vendors.
“This year we wanted to make it more accessible, and it landed on Mother’s day, so it was kind of like a perfect 2-in-1 type of thing,” said Manuel Rivas, the owner of 1997 where the market was hosted.
Before the market behind me began, three different food based vendors were here and set up as an example for how to operate safely to about 30 different people who also want to get into the same business.”
“We want to make sure vendors are empowered with the knowledge and power they need to be able to get through the permitting process and learn how to set up their stations properly so they’re able to serve safe food,” said Jocelyn Castillo, a Community Health Specialist with the Yakima Health District.
The vendors present were able to help show the participants a real-life example of what a healthy and safe food serving environment looks like.
“We had our actual food inspectors here do walk through mock inspections with everyone so they could get some hands-on practice on this,” Castillo said.
The market is also intended to tell potential business owners realize that the health district is just trying to facilitate safety.
“The market is really just to help small businesses, especially food businesses meet the requirements and get used to speaking with the health district so that it isn’t such a fear-based system,” Rivas said.
Dozens of people were at the market perusing the shops and eating the food, just minutes after dozens of people learned about the industry.
“It seemed like most people were new, and just wanting to get their foot in the door, and start learning about the process of what it takes to set up a food business,” Castillo said.
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