Peddler Market: Meet the team behind Yorkshire’s monthly night market as the event hits its 10th anniversary

Originally an outdoor event based in Sheffield’s Cultural Industries Quarter, the first Peddler market would bring around 800 people to a car park on the city centre’s Arundel Street.

By its third event, the street food and music market would bring in around 1,500 people, an event so large it meant the entirety of Arundel Street had to be closed.

Now, ten years later, with a permanent home in Sheffield’s Kelham Island and two further locations under their belts, the pair have marked their tenth anniversary by launching a Peddler Market in Leeds, a challenge they by no means wish to downplay.

“We’re not naive, I think Leeds is going to be a bigger challenge,” says Smith, speaking from Kelham Island’s Factory Floor, a bar also run by the pair.

“It's a bigger city, slightly more metropolitan, with slightly more stuff going on, but I think we’ve got something that will hopefully really resonate with the people there.”

Roberts and Smith first met while working at coffee shop Tamper Coffee, in Sheffield city centre.

Roberts had previously studied product design at Sheffield Hallam University, while Smith had worked for a charity in Shoreditch, before the two launched The Hop Box – a horse box turned mobile bar – in 2012.

The idea for Peddler Market first came to the pair whilst driving to and from London for similar market events.

“It was four hours there and four hours back every night, and we were chatting about what we think Sheffield needed as a city,” says Roberts.

“We both shared the same beliefs on how there could be improvements in the food scene. I also knew a lot of musicians at the time, and thought they deserved a platform that was worthy of them.”

“We were going to these events and driving back up the motorway after midnight saying: ‘why are we doing this? Why are we travelling four hours to these events? Why isn't there an event like this in sheffield?,” adds Smith.

“We realised that we thought there should be events like this in Sheffield, and that we could either sit around and wait for someone else to do it, or we could create one ourselves.

“I think without sounding arrogant, we were actually very well placed to create an event like Peddler. We had seen the composition of other street food night markets in other cities, we knew what the ingredients were to make a good one, and we also knew quite a lot of traders.

“For the first event – had we not known the traders we invited – they probably wouldn't have gambelled on us. We basically just rang a lot of the traders we knew were good and had worked with and said: ‘we’ve got no idea how successful it's going to be, but if you could come along, bring what you do well and bring your following, we think it's going to be a success.’”

A year after its launch in Sheffield centre, the pair decided to give Peddler Market a new, predominantly indoor home in a former spring factory in Kelham Island, Neepsend.

“When you walk into somewhere and the hairs on your neck stand up, you just know,” says Roberts.

“We knew it was the right place, but for us it was a massive roll of the dice lifting the market from the city centre and taking it to the industrial area.”

Despite the pair's concerns, the event was a huge success, with queues around the block in their first few events.

Now in its permanent home in Kelham Island, Sheffield’s Peddler Market brings between 6,000 and 8,000 people to each of its monthly events, showcasing local craftspeople, street food, craft beers and live music.

Part of its appeal, Smith believes, is the industrial space that surrounds the Sheffield venue.

“Its very much not a polished part of Sheffield, but its got real life in it, and its a working part of the city,” he says.

“We’ve still got a working factory next door, it's part of Sheffield's heritage. It isn't an ex-industrial area, it's a current industrial area, a lot of the businesses around us are still producing stuff.

“I think whether people know it or not, when they come to peddler and talk about the surroundings, that's what resonates with them. They like being in something that feels real.”

In April of last year, Peddler announced its first event outside Sheffield, with a launch in Chesterfield.

This was followed in December by Peddler launching in Wakefield’s Tileyard.

Last month, the business announced its latest development, with a new regular event set to take place at Project House in Leeds, the new venue set up by the teams behind Brudenell Social Club, Headrow House and Belgrave Music Hall & Canteen.​

“We probably wouldn’t have set up in Leeds unless the gap felt obvious, and I think the gap did feel obvious, and the relationship with Project House was really important to us,” says Roberts.

“We spent a lot of time getting to know those guys. We obviously knew them by reputation, but we didnt know them on a personal level, and that relationship built really well.

“The venue is amazing, it feels like it's a really good fit for us, so we’re really positive about how that can grow.

“We knew when we walked into that warehouse, and got the same tingle on the back of our necks, that we had found another home for Peddler.”