Thames Market has been a community-focused space from its very beginnings. As its 30th anniversary approaches on September 27, past and present owners discuss what the iconic weekly event has meant to them and the town. ALICE PARMINTER reports.
The market was opened in Grahamstown in 1995 by Dianne and Peter McKinnon. At the time, the couple were looking for somewhere to sell their produce.
Inspired by overseas farmers’ markets, and noticing a distinct lack of similar spaces in New Zealand, they spent months planning and campaigning to get the council on board.
“It was definitely a huge, huge job to get it off the ground – there wasn’t the awareness at all in those years that this could be something beneficial for the town,” Peter said.
The market opened with only a dozen stalls.
“This end of the street was absolutely dead, there were just closed shops,” Dianne said.
Dianne and Peter treated the market as their “family”. Their focus was on hand-made goods and small homestead produce – every stall owner was expected to have had personal input into their products.
“It was all down to communication,” Dianne said.
Although the couple had to contend with local businesses concerned about the market’s potential to eat into their customer base, they soon found the market thriving.
Dianne reached customers via word-of-mouth and media interviews, holding regular events to draw interest.
“We put a lot of effort into advertising and getting all the stories we could in the local papers,” she said.
When the time came to hand over the reins, naturally Dianne and Peter looked among their regular stallholders for a like-minded successor. They found Angelika and Peter Peoschl, an immigrant couple from Germany who had been running a bread stall.
“We became acquainted quite soon,” Peter Poeschl said of the market’s original owners.
“I was baking bread a lot for the family at home because New Zealand bread was not to our liking at that time… We said, we could do a bread stall.”
The four sat down for coffee one day, and Dianne and Peter McKinnon asked if they would like to own the market.
“[We thought] it might be a bit much to do,” Peter Poeschl said.
“But then we dived in there and thought that’s a really good thing because we wanted it to keep going the way it was… it needs to be preserved because if it’s gone, then it would be really bad for the town.”
Angelika and Peter took on the market in February, 2009. “It was really mainly [Angelika’s] business,” Peter Poeschl said.
“She really was the heart and soul of it – I was just assistant manager.”
The Poeschls remained in charge until June, 2021, when they, too, began the search for a successor. And once again, they turned to the “family”.
“I arrived in New Zealand in 2014, but before I came to the country I already knew Thames Market,” current market owner Jiani Ranay said.
Soon she had a stall of her own, and a community around her. “In a way, the stallholders have become my family,” she said.
Angelika and Peter had been looking for someone who loved the market as they did, and who would continue to run it as Dianne and Peter McKinnon had originally envisioned. Jiani fit the bill perfectly.
“They hired me first as a contractor, but behind the scenes, they were teaching me how to do it,” Jiani said.
“And I just carried on from there. It’s challenging, but it’s fun.”
The previous owners still support Jiani and the market from behind the scenes. The market was a big part of their lives, they said, and it’s had a huge impact on the town too.
“Through the years, there’ve been stallholders going on from just being a little tiny thing into good businesses,” Dianne said.
“For some stallholders, the market has become the highlight of their week,” Jiani added.
Nowadays, Thames Market hosts around 45 stalls in peak summer periods, and 30 or so over winter. It still receives a lot of support from the community.
“The radio station said it would only last three months,” Peter McKinnon said.
“It’s still here, 30 years later.”
