Get Started
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Getting Started

Go from a new account to a live, bookable market: onboarding, payouts, your first market, dates, pricing, and going live.

VendorStreet is booking and management software for people who run recurring, place-based businesses — farmers markets, craft fairs, event venues, and guided tours or classes. This guide takes you from a fresh account to a live, bookable market.

You don’t have to use every part of the product. Most operators start with one market, add pricing and compliance rules once vendors start booking, and expand into venues or experiences later.

What can I run on VendorStreet?

The platform is organized around three things you can sell:

  • Markets — recurring events where vendors book a spot for a date. This is the classic farmers market or artisan fair setup. See Markets.
  • Venues — a market that sells specific, named locations instead of a headcount: booths on a map, or seats and tables in a room. See Venues & Seating.
  • Experiences — tours, classes, tastings, and workshops that guests book and pay for on a public page. See Experiences.

All three share one organization, one add-on catalog, and one set of reports.

Step 1: Create your account and verify your email

Register at /auth/register and pick the business model that best describes you. This is a starting preset, not a permanent identity — it decides which features are switched on out of the box. You can change what you run later without creating a new account.

Check your inbox and click the verification link. Until your email is verified, the admin areas stay locked.

Step 2: Complete organization onboarding

Your organization is the container for everything else — markets, venues, experiences, staff, and billing. Go to Settings → Organization and fill in your legal name, organization type, address, and contact information.

You’ll need this complete before you can publish anything or connect payouts.

Step 3: Connect payouts

If you plan to take money through VendorStreet, connect Stripe now — it’s the step most likely to hold you up later, because Stripe sometimes asks for verification documents that take a day to clear.

Go to Settings → Organization, find the Payouts card, and click Connect payouts. You’ll be handed to Stripe’s hosted onboarding flow and then returned to VendorStreet. Click Refresh status when you get back; the badge should read Connected.

Full details are in Payments & Payouts.

Step 4: Create your first market

From the dashboard, go to Markets and click Create Market. You’ll need:

  • Market name — what vendors and the public will see.
  • Slug — the short, URL-safe name used in public links, like riverside-saturday. Pick it carefully; it appears in every link you share.
  • Booking mode — Capacity or Spaces.

The booking mode is the one decision worth slowing down for:

  • Choose Capacity if you sell “a spot at the market” and don’t care which one. You cap the number of vendors per date and that’s it.
  • Choose Spaces if vendors book a specific named booth, or if you’re laying out seats and tables. This is what turns a market into a venue.

You can change this later, but it affects existing bookings and space assignments, so it’s much easier to get right the first time. See Markets for the full field list.

Step 5: Add your market dates

Open your market, go to the Scheduling tab, and create your first schedule — a single date and time that vendors can book.

Rather than entering forty Saturdays by hand, set your Schedule Defaults first (default start and end times, booking window, capacity), then use the weekly series tool to generate a whole season at once. Date conflicts are skipped and summarized so you can review them.

See Scheduling.

Step 6: Define your vendor types

Vendor types are the categories you sort vendors into — Farmer, Prepared Food, Artisan, Nonprofit. They drive pricing overrides and compliance rules, so set them up before you configure either.

Open the Vendor Types tab. See Vendor Types.

Step 7: Set your prices and rules

Three tabs shape what a booking costs and who’s allowed to make one:

  • Pricing Rules — vendor type pricing, late booking penalties, and discount codes. See Pricing Rules.
  • Booking Rules — how many hours before an event bookings close, and the message vendors see when they miss the cutoff.
  • Vendor Compliance — the checklist a vendor must clear before they can book: signed agreements, insurance certificates, permits. See Vendor Compliance Rules.

Upload the documents your rules reference first, under the Documents tab. See Document Library.

Step 8: Add optional extras

If you sell electricity hookups, extra tables, canopy rentals, or parking passes, build them once in your organization’s add-on catalog and attach them to as many markets, venues, and experiences as you like.

Step 9: Go live

Open the Status & Visibility tab and switch your market to a live status. Vendors can now find it, clear your compliance checklist, and book.

Share your public application link — /markets/<your-slug>/apply — anywhere you’d normally post a vendor call.

Where to go next