Hmong Flower Pop-Up at Pagliacci Pizza

For Vikki Cha, the Pike Place Market is like a second home. She was just eight when her parents, Laotian immigrants, began farming tulips, zinnias, dahlias and lilies and selling them at the market. As a young girl, Vikki would run through the tilled soil seeking worms to feed to their chickens. In middle school, she would take the bus to Seattle and join her mother to help sell bouquets. As an adult, after working a full-time professional job for several years, Vikki agreed to help her aging parents with the family business. Flowers were in her blood, a way of life.

The Hmong exodus from Laos started with the 1975 communist takeover of the country that followed the end of the Vietnam War. Since then, about 200,000 Hmong people, primarily farmers, have fled. Washington state is home to about 2,000 Hmong refugees. To help the Hmong people be self-sufficient, King County and the Pike Place Market worked together to create the Indochinese Farm Project in 1986. The 18-acre cooperative farm by the Sammamish River in South Seattle is located on land owned by King County. The market offered the farmers a place to sell their produce.

Vikki’s parents began farming there in 1995. They tend the soil, plant the seeds, weed the fields, nurture the plants, and cut the flowers. “Because Mom doesn’t drive, Dad gets up to take her to the market to set up at 5 a.m. and picks her up at 5 p.m.,” Vikki says. “They go back to the farm in Carnation and harvest for the following day. That’s been their routine for the last 25 years."

At least it was until the coronavirus hit in March. Washington state’s stay-home order shuttered non-essential businesses at the Pike Place Market, including the flower stands. Many of the Hmong farmers had no outlet for their blossoms, and many had to throw their flowers away or let them rot in the ground.

“Never in my life did I imagine the market, which is open 362 days a year, would close indefinitely,” Vikki says. Pike Place has always been 100 percent of the revenue for us. When they shut down it was really scary.”

Then Vikki got a call from Tara Clark, a local Seattleite, who offered to sell bouquets through a Facebook group. “The first day she ordered 50 dozen tulips, which for a small farmer like us is like hitting a home run—you can’t do better than that. The next day she ordered 100 dozen!”

From there, Vikki worked with Tara and ended up selling over enough flowers to stabilize finances amongst the 52 different Hmong farmers. Now all they needed was a place to set up a stand. Tara connected her to Pagliacci co-owner Matt Galvin, and together they came up with the Pagliacci Pop-Up Flower Stand idea. Now, five days a week, Vikki sets up a stand at a different Pagliacci location. On Tuesday she is at Main Street (Bellevue), Wednesday on Mercer Island, Thursday in West Seattle, and Saturday and Sunday she is at our Madison Valley location. Her hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Bouquets are $20.

Drop by. It’s like the Pike Place Market coming to you! You’ll be enchanted with Vikki and her marvelous arrangements—all a great value—and you’ll help support a vital Pike Place Market business and a way of life.