Market Trader CV Examples & Writing Guide

This CV is for someone who has run a produce and prepared-food stall at farmers' markets for several years and is applying both for a pitch at a larger market and for retail management jobs. The name and businesses are made up. Notice that the stall is written up as a job with numbers, not as a hobby.

Market traders write CVs for three reasons: to apply for a pitch at a competitive market, to get a retail, sales or food job with stall experience as the main qualification, or to pitch to a wholesale buyer. All three readers start with the same four things.

• Sales numbers. Sales per market day, transactions per day, growth year on year. A retail manager reads "£800 a day across 120 transactions" the same way they read a shop's daily report.
• Money handling and systems. Cash accuracy, the card reader or EPOS you ran (SumUp, Square, Zettle, Shopify POS), card and contactless payments, records kept for Self Assessment or VAT. This tells them you can be trusted with a till.
• Reliability. Markets start at 6am in the rain. "Every Saturday for six years" and "set up in 40 minutes" say more about attendance than any adjective.
• Compliance. Food hygiene certificate, council food business registration and hygiene rating, street trading licence or market pitch agreement, public liability insurance. Market managers check this first; retail employers see someone who follows rules.

“When a market trader applies for a shift lead job, I want to see their daily sales and how they handled the till. Someone who ran their own stall for five years has done more customer service than most of my applicants, but they have to write it down as numbers or I cannot compare it.”

Self-employment confuses people writing CVs, so they underplay it. Write the stall as a job entry with a business name, your title, the markets as the "employer" line, dates, and bullet points with numbers. Then decide what you are applying for and pick the bullet points that match.

Write a personal statement if you are staying in food, markets or retail and your stall is the main story. Write a career objective if you are applying for a job in a different field and need to say why a stall owner is applying. Either way, lead with the numbers.

Your skills section should read like a small retailer's, because that is what you are. Ten to twelve items, mostly things you can prove with a number or a certificate.

• Selling: face-to-face selling, sampling and demonstration, upselling bundles, handling 100+ customers a day, repeat-customer schemes, conversational Spanish or another language your customers speak.
• Money and systems: cash handling and cashing up, SumUp, Square or Zettle card readers, Shopify POS, card, contactless and mobile payments, daily sales records, bookkeeping for Self Assessment (and VAT if your turnover passes the threshold) in a spreadsheet, QuickBooks, Xero or FreeAgent.
• Product and stock: sourcing and supplier negotiation, pricing and margin, perishable stock and waste control, small-batch food production and labelling (including allergen information), batch records for prepared foods.
• Operations: stall setup and display, gazebo safety and weighting, vehicle loading, early-morning logistics, licences and pitch bookings, working in heat, cold and rain.
• Marketing: Instagram and Facebook posts, market newsletters, signage and price boards, product photography on a phone, an Etsy or Shopify shop if you have one.
• Compliance: Level 2 Food Hygiene certificate, council food business registration and hygiene inspections, market rules, public and product liability insurance certificates.

Leave out "friendly" and "outgoing". "60 weekly regulars" proves both.

Market traders are regulated locally, and the rules change by council and even by market. List what you hold with the issuer and year, and never guess at a licence name. Common items in the UK:

• Food hygiene certificate: anyone handling open food must be trained in food hygiene, and a Level 2 Food Hygiene and Safety certificate is the usual proof that markets ask for. Courses are short and often online. Level 3 suits supervisors and larger food businesses.
• Food business registration: anyone selling food, including food made at home, must register with their local council at least 28 days before trading. Registration is free; the council then inspects and gives a food hygiene rating (Scotland uses the Food Hygiene Information Scheme).
• Street trading licence or consent, or a market pitch: selling on the street needs a licence or consent from the council in most areas, while trading at an organised market usually means a pitch agreement or casual pitch booking with the market operator. Check with the council and the market.
• Tax: register as self-employed with HMRC and file Self Assessment; register for VAT if your taxable turnover passes the VAT threshold (£90,000 since April 2024).
• Business registration: a trading name, or a limited company if you formed one. Optional on a CV, useful if you are applying to manage a shop.
• Labelling and allergens: food you pack yourself needs the right label and allergen information, and for food sold loose you must still be able to tell customers about allergens. Councils and Trading Standards enforce this.
• Insurance and memberships: public liability insurance (many markets ask for £5m cover), product liability if you make what you sell, and membership of the National Market Traders' Federation (NMTF) or a farmers' market association if you have it.

Many traders run a stall part-time and want a steadier wage, or a winter job when markets slow down. Your stall is real experience for cashier, sales assistant, shift leader, produce assistant, deli, catering, inside sales and small-business banking roles. The trick is to translate stall tasks into the employer's words.

1. 1Read the advert and list its nouns: till, EPOS, stock, merchandising, customer service, loss prevention, food safety, sales targets. Match each to a stall bullet point.
2. 2Put a one-line career objective or personal statement at the top that names the job you want and the two or three numbers that qualify you (daily sales, transactions, years without a discrepancy).
3. 3Keep the stall as your most recent job with your title as Owner-Operator or Market Trader. Add "self-employed" once. Do not hide the business; managers like people who have carried the whole responsibility.
4. 4Add a Skills section using the advert's terms: "EPOS (SumUp)", "cash handling", "stock rotation", "food safety (Level 2 Food Hygiene)", "merchandising".
5. 5Say your availability. If you keep the Saturday market, say you are available Sunday to Friday. Hiding a clash costs you the job later.

• One page. Three entries (stall, previous jobs) with three to six bullet points each is plenty.
• Order: header, personal statement or career objective, experience (stall first), skills, licences and certificates, education. Put certificates above education; they matter more.
• Plain format, one column, no photo and no date of birth (standard in the UK). Large retailers use applicant tracking systems such as Workday or SuccessFactors to read CVs; keep the skills list as plain text, not a table.
• Include your business Instagram or website in the header only if it is active and looks professional. It is your portfolio.
• Keywords to mirror: "EPOS", "cash handling", "customer service", "stock", "merchandising", "food hygiene", "sales", "self-employed", and the exact market or shop type in the advert.
• UK adverts and markets use "market trader", "stallholder" and "market stall assistant". Use one of those on your CV; "vendor" reads as American to most UK employers.
• Save as PDF: Rosa-Villanueva-CV.pdf. For a market application, attach product photos, your food hygiene certificate and your insurance certificate as separate files the way the market's form asks.

Run the finished file through the cvplex ATS checker with the retail or sales advert pasted in. It shows which of the advert's words (EPOS, stock, food hygiene) are missing from your stall bullet points.