Business
Vendors can pay over $27,000 in rent for their Snowport booth.
Behind the decorated booths at Snowport, business owners pay a steep price for the visibility and sales that come with the holiday market.
While most Snowport shoppers focus on the price tags of individual items, the over 125 business owners know the true cost of renting and running one of the booths — and they say it’s worth it.
One of the food vendors, The Frenchman’s Crepes, pays about $27,000 in rent for a double booth, and The Half Cookie, another food vendor, pays $20,800 for its “booth-and-a-half”-sized stall, or 18% of their sales, whichever is greater.
Two retail vendors, Lizzie’s Bakery and the nature-inspired jewelry business Gratinsta, also rent a booth-and-a-half for the same flat rate, or 12% of their sales, whichever is greater.
The Snowport Holiday Market is an annual European-style holiday market that transforms a vacant lot on Seaport Boulevard in Boston into a holiday wonderland lined with garland, twinkling lights, and of course, food and retail vendors. The market opened on Nov. 7 and operates daily until Dec. 28, with extended shopping hours beginning on Dec. 8.
Since Snowport’s inaugural market in 2019, vendors only paid a flat rent rate. This year, the market introduced the sales percentage model, which is used at other pop-ups.
Lizzie Johnson, who runs the aforementioned bakery out of her Acton home, said 12% of her market sales last year was comparable to the $20,800 minimum rent rate. In general, she prefers paying rent based on a sales percentage, which she does at her pink shed pop-up at Faneuil Hall that is open through March. Under that model, “if you have a slow day at Faneuil Hall, it doesn’t hurt you,” she said.
To obtain a booth at Snowport, vendors must fill out an extensive application form regarding their business, the type of products, and prices before the early June deadline. The application pool is competitive with most Snowport vendors being small businesses and owned by women, people of color, veterans, and members of LGBTQIA+ community.
Snowport offers stall sizes from a “half booth” to a double booth, with the minimum rent rates ranging from $7,500 to $27,200. A typical food stall or truck space costs $15,000 or 18% of gross sales, whichever is greater, and includes a storage space.
Vendors can purchase a corner booth space for an additional $900, which Gratinsta, The Half Cookie, and The Frenchman’s Crepes did, and a storage pod outside of the market for $1,800. The market also offers scholarships to vendors, which are provided by this year’s market sponsor Constant Contact.
Snowport Booth Costs
| Type | Dimensions | Deposit | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Half Booth | 4’8 by 7’10 | $1,500 | $7,500* |
| Single Booth | 9’8 by 7’10 | $3,000 | $13,300* |
| Booth-and-a-half | 14’8 by 7’10 | $4,500 | $20,800* |
| Double Booth | 19’6 by 7’10 or 16′ by 10′ | $6,000 | $27,200* |
| Food Booth or Food Truck (with storage) | N/A | $3,000 | $15,000** |
* or 12% of sales, whichever is greater; ** or 18% of gross sales, whichever is greater
The rent prices grant the vendors an open-facade booth with three walls, a roof, and access to electricity for a total of 49 days. The businesses must complete their booths, staff, and stock them.
WS Development, the Snowport organizer, declined to comment on how the booth prices are set.
Why the price is worth it
While the rent rates for a Snowport booth may seem high, the owners of Lizzie’s Bakery, Gratinsta, The Frenchman’s Crepes, and The Half Cookie agreed the price tag is reasonable and comparable to other markets.
“Snowport is worth it to us because of just how many sales you can make in two months. And you get so many eyes on your brand in those two short months that continue on the following year,” Johnson, the baker, said.
Last year, Lizzie’s Bakery sold an average of 500 cake slices every weekend. In the first three days of this year’s market, the bakery sold out of 75 dozen, or 900, cupcakes that Johnson thought would last the first 10 days. So far this year, the bakery’s Snowport sales are up 30%, according to a Nov. 20 Instagram story.
Johnson runs her home bakery with one other full-time baker and three part-time baking assistants, in addition to her six Snowport retail workers.
“I want to show home bakers … that you can, if you’re crazy, do this at your home and make a lot of money,” she said. “You don’t have to have a storefront anymore.”
Manali Shinde, the owner of Gratinsta, echoed Johnson’s thoughts on Snowport’s value.
“The amount of people and the footprint is insane,” she said.
Over 1 million people visited Snowport in 2024, according to WS Development.
Shinde is currently focused on her business’s 700 retail partners, including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston gift shop, and is only bringing Gratinsta to Snowport and a holiday market in Washington, D.C., this year, compared to the six markets across six major cities the brand was at last year.
Compared to retail, Snowport is “easy,” Shinde said. “I love Snowport for that reason.”
The Frenchman’s Crepes exclusively operates at Snowport, typically, but plans to expand into the holiday market in D.C. and other pop-ups next year due to the business’s Snowport success.
“It’s worth it for the visibility, … for the fun of it,” and the community support from other businesses, owner Derek Jacob said.
Jacob sees the Snowport rent as a small price to pay for the amount the market does for the vendors: building the base of the booth, providing electricity, and complying with building certifications, in addition to creating a high visibility market.
In addition to the physical market, Snowport manages advertising, public relations, and digital footprints for the market and the vendors, WS Development says. And beyond these vendors, 80% of all the 2024 Snowport vendors returned to the market this year, according to the company.
Of the four businesses mentioned, The Half Cookie, named for owner Danielle Velez’s habit of eating half of a cookie at a time, is the only one with a brick-and-mortar location. The Half Cookie opened in Chestnut Hill in June 2024 due to its success at the Seaport pop-up The Current earlier that year and its continued success during its first run at Snowport last winter, Velez said.
“Snowport for us was the largest daily sales that we’ve ever seen,” she said. As a self-funded small business, however, “it is a financial risk.”
In January, The Half Cookie will open its second brick-and-mortar location in Winthrop, in the space currently serving as its commercial kitchen.
Bringing the booths to life
With just three days to set up, Shinde, the jeweler, called the process of turning an “empty wooden box” into a “one-of-a-kind” booth a Netflix-worthy race against time. And all four businesses agreed: It takes all three days to build their booths.
For the Gratinsta team, the first day is for painting and installing lighting, the second is for assembling furniture, and the third is for filling the display cases with inventory and securing everything tight enough to face Boston’s winter weather.
During Shinde’s first Snowport in 2021, the Gratinista booth was decorated with the table and chandelier from her dining room because she was accepted into the market one week before it started while still working full time in sales, she said.
Last year, Shinde spent $3,000 on equipment to offer permanent jewelry. This year, she spent another $7,000 to offer custom engravings of names, dates, and images on keychains and necklace and bracelet pendants. Gratinsta will also have 115 new pieces across all of its collections — flowers, bees, leaves, butterflies, and more — from launches throughout this year on display.
The Half Cookie is bringing its espresso drinks to Snowport this year through a $15,000 investment in an espresso cart that Velez hopes to rent out in the future.
“Snowport is such a momentous event that I also kind of use it each year as … my New Year’s resolution,” she said. “How do I want the business to grow? [And] let’s launch that at Snowport.”
This year, The Half Cookie will also offer cookie butter lattes, buckets of mini cookies, and hopefully, cinnamon rolls on the weekends.
For the entire market, setup takes around a month to build the booths, install utilities, and decorate, WS Development told Boston.com.
In 2022, The Frenchman’s Crepes operated out of a single booth and spent “tens of thousands” of dollars on equipment, Jacob estimates. Since 2023, the crepe vendor has operated in a double booth, which required more equipment to fill the larger space and satisfy customer demand.
The double booth is feeling extra tight this year with up to five staff members in the booth during peak hours, Jacob said. He is considering taking the booth apart and reorganizing it, but is hesitant because his staff would have to learn a new working order while the market is well underway.
While overall sales have soared, The Frenchman’s Crepes have seen tips steadily decline each year, from 10% on average to 5%, Jacob said.
New to The Frenchmen’s Crepes this year is fresh fruit replacing its strawberry jam filling and a new crepe, “The Tour de France,” which is filled with brie, fig jam, and prosciutto.
For Lizzie’s Bakery’s first year at Snowport in 2023, Johnson spent $8,000 for professionals to build and design her booth. For the last two years, she’s reused the same set up and spent less than $1,000 on new decor, she said.
This year, Johnson wasn’t much help during setup because she’s pregnant with her third son. When a brand new display case worth $2,500 shattered during transport, her husband, who quit his corporate job to join Lizzie’s full-time, was tasked with cleaning up the mess and installing the display cases from last year, Johnson said.
To bring the products to the market, Lizzie’s Bakery utilizes a commercial fridge space in Woburn that Johnson began renting last year at $350 per month to bring her stockpile closer to Boston. She doesn’t purchase storage through Snowport because they don’t offer refrigeration, she said.
Inside the Lizzie’s Bakery booth, shoppers will find 10 to 12 cake slice flavors, cupcakes, cake jars, cakesicles, which are popsicle-shaped cake pops, cookies, and updated “Butter” merchandise, now with the Boston accent spelling of “Buttah.”
Although it takes three days to set up, the businesses only get two days to take it all down, including the last day the market is open. Then, the process starts all over again when vendor applications go live in the spring.
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