If you’ve been to the market recently, you may have noticed our beautiful new Information Booth tent. It’s clean, it’s sturdy, it has our logo on it… it’s pretty much everything we could wish for in a 10’x15’ tent.

This tent was a gift from one of our generous market sponsors, Spitzer Technology Consulting - or SpitzerTech, for short. David Spitzer, founder and owner of SpitzerTech (and, yes, also husband to our very own market manager, Olivia) saw that our old info booth tent was failing, and decided it was high time to replace it. I recently had a conversation with David to learn more about SpitzerTech and why his company decided to sponsor the market in this way. 

David started SpitzerTech in 2011 while working as a senior engineer at another technology firm, because he wanted more control over how he did business - most importantly, how he took care of his customers. He wanted to be able to serve the mom-and-pop shops and to truly be able to walk his talk when it came to business ethics. In 2015 he left his job and went all-in on the business, and he’s never looked back. 

When I confessed I didn’t have a solid understanding of what “technology consulting” encompassed, David explained it to me like this: The two main types of tech companies are “break-fix” shops and Managed Service Providers (MSPs). “Break-fix” shops are largely reactive - something breaks, you get it fixed. MSPs are contract-based relationships, with a goal of preventing things from breaking in the first place. SpitzerTech is a full-service shop that does both, but focuses on the whole-systems approach to keeping networks up and running without interruption, offering top-notch security software, automatic updates, and on-demand help from expert technicians. 

Supporting “the little guys” isn’t a new thing for SpitzerTech. The majority of their clients are non-profits and mom-and-pop shops. “Nobody treats the little guys with the same respect that larger companies get with IT services,” David says. He gets noticeably worked up when describing how small businesses so often get “nickeled and dimed to death” by large IT companies, when all they need is a simple setup for a couple of computers. “It’s death by a thousand cuts,” he says. But SpitzerTech is out to change that. 

SpitzerTech serves primarily small, local businesses, and David puts his money where his mouth is when it comes to spending his dollars. I asked him what his favorite farmers’ market meal is and he said he’s been working on perfecting homemade saag paneer, using the tops and cast-off parts of all the delicious market veggies. But also, “I’m not going to lie, the Yak Man [Pine Mountain Ranch] has some great yak steaks.” Yak fajitas, anyone? I shouldn’t have had this conversation right before lunch…

I asked David why, in choosing to sponsor the market, he decided to donate a tent instead of money. His response was simple: “I volunteered at your site and saw your old tent, and I wanted my wife to keep all of her fingers.” I’m happy to report a 100% success rate on that so far.

Before I got off the phone with David, he checked in with his employees to see if anybody had anything to add about the company, or why they wanted to sponsor the farmers’ market. One said, “because we care,” and David said that about sums it up: “We want to take care of people and we want to do it right.”

You can find SpitzerTech online at www.spitzertech.net.

This article was included in our newsletter as a part of our sponsorship agreement with Spitzer Technology Consulting.

If you too would like to get your business in front of our audience, reach out about sponsorship opportunities with Hillsdale Farmers' Market by clicking here.