The Wicker Park Bucktown Chamber of Commerce is and has always been supportive of small businesses. We understand this is an especially difficult time and our staff has been working around the clock to assist businesses in the neighborhood. Currently we have 20 other Wicker Park Farmers Market vendors that have been willing to work with us to comply with the COVID-19 health and safety protocols at our market this season; we were unwilling to make an exception to these rules for Nichols Farm. All vendors including Nichols Farm received a copy of these COVID-19 protocols prior to the start of the market season.
The first week of our market, Nichols Farm was in noncompliance of several safety protocols, and we attempted to work with them that day to resolve the issues. Then, a DCASE inspector visited our market on July 12 and identified additional noncompliance issues. Nichols Farm was notified of their noncompliance issues that day in person, and they were the sole vendor to decline to rectify the issues on-site that day. We followed up to Nichols Farm with an email as well, but they returned to Wicker Park Farmers Market the following weekend still in noncompliance with some of the COVID-19 health regulations for our market. On each of these occasions, our staff attempted to work with Nichols Farm to comply with the guidelines.
The leadership of Nichols Farm has not yet reached out to us to properly address these health and safety issues. Instead, they first went to social media claiming they were removed without cause, then later acknowledged some of their noncompliance with COVID-19 health protocols, but attacked us for enforcing these protocols to protect our patrons. We do not take these protocols lightly and take our role to enforce them seriously, in order to ensure the health of our community during a pandemic.