Presenting yourself and you product at the farmers market.
garliclady
19 years ago
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breezyb
19 years agotrianglejohn
19 years agoRelated Discussions
Do you have this problem??
Comments (11)I'm gonna respond even though my circumstances are way different - and I don't follow the rules of conduct for most vendors. Customers that start off with price complaints are NOT THE CUSTOMERS YOU WANT! Don't waste your time with them. Smile, act like you can't hear them, silently cuss them out but whatever you do DO NOT CAVE IN TO THEIR DEMANDS! They will have you jumping through so many hoops that you will eventually hate what you are doing. Spend all your efforts on the customers that recognise that you offer a superior product or at least something they might want. You can impress these people. You can build a wonderful business on these people. Nothing good will ever come from the "other" people. As I see it, you are not competing with the grocery store or some vendor at another marketplace across town - you are standing in front of THIS CROWD. Impress THEM. They are regulars. They have money in their pockets. They came here to spend it. Your job is to build a relationship with them so that if they want what you offer they think of shopping at your booth first. Someone else can ALWAYS offer a cheaper product or even a better one (everyone cannot possibly grow the best tasting tomato, someone's will always taste better). Your job is to offer the best product you can grow. Sell it the best way you know how (everybody sells differently, you don't have to do it the same way). Keeping track of what other vendors are doing and what they are charging is a full time job and a waste of time. Know how much it cost you to produce your product, know how much it cost you to stay in business and price it accordingly. Don't give special deals or free samples to everyone that walks by. Focus on the folks that actually seem interested in what you are selling. Get to know them. If your product is too expensive for that segment of the audience, figure out a creative way to re-package it and re-price it so that it appears cheaper. I sell live plants (mostly herbs and ornamental plants) at the huge flea market in the city. There are numerous vendors selling ornamental plants, bushes and trees, and produce (some resellers, some dumpers, some home-grown). Every day I have thousands of people walking past my booth. Not all of them are there to spend money and not everyone there spending money is spending the kind of money I want them to spend. I quickly learned that when a nearby vendor is selling hanging baskets for $8 (these would sell for $15 at Home Depot!) there was no way I could compete. There is tree/shrub vendor selling large, perfectly tended plants for as low as $15, so cross that off the list. I sell small rooted cuttings and seedlings for $1 - $2 often in dixie cups. I offer a few combo planters and hand painted birdhouses for $25 and up but I mostly sell small plants. People always comment on how cheap my plants are. I sell a tomato seedling for $1 in a 4 cent dixie cup with about a nickles worth of soil and care. You could go down the street and buy a six pack of seedlings at Home Depot for 98 cents! So it is all in perception. You don't make money growing plants. You make money SELLING plants....See Morewhere do you sell besides a farmers market?
Comments (7)I have very limited experience all around but have tried a few things other than markets. I put some stuff on consignment last year and the year before. This was at a produce stand and at a retail nursery that was setting up a "locally grown" stand. It wasn't bad I got 60-80% of good retail prices. I also sold butternut squash for 3 months to a restaurant and charged the same per pound as at the markets, with free delivery. I tried restaurants on other items but wasn't really ready and found that in general I do not like dealing with restaurants or doing too much hunting for buyers. I found one great chef who wants local organic produce. He is right near one of my markets but he's too busy to look at new items every week ,has a somewhat stable menu and production has not been big enough yet on most things I have grown. I would like to go back to selling to restaurants small scale... hopefully the one I mentioned and similar places, but won't bother until I could consistently deliver the same items for a couple of months or more. I wouldn't mind taking request to grow certain things for chefs, but I have only met a few and that has not happened yet....it could....See MoreSelling bread at farmers' market....your opinions?
Comments (45)Good luck to you, Judy! Starting small is a good way to start until you can see what amount of traffic your market has. I plan to make some orange sweet rolls for Saturday, put them in small sandwich bags, display them in a napkin lined basket and hope they sell out immediately! LOL! I'm probably not going to go with the name Bungalow Breads, the main reason being that I may not stay in this house. For right now I'm not posting a name on my sign, just introducing myself by my name when people ask. I will want to perfect my Parker House roll recipe. People in the South love Parker House rolls! It's the roll of choice for every holiday and special occasion meal. But I don't know how many cooks still make them. Teresa...See MoreFarmer's Market or Farmer Fraud?
Comments (33)Soapbox here - Tomatoes grown in hoop houses (or green houses, hot houses) or grown hydroponically can easily be ready in June and can be considered locally grown. Perfectly shaped because they can be manipulated sun-wise with grow lights to get the right light all they way around - different than open field grown, and are bug/virus/critter free. Why they are not quite ripe depends on when they are picked. If a Market is on Saturday they have to be picked Wed to Fri. If they are perfectly ripe on Tuesday they will be mush on Saturday. I have also watched people pick up every single fresh tomato of 200 or so on a table, turn each one over, inspect it, put it down, then walk away. Figure 100 people doing that per hour and that poor ripe tomato is mush. Under ripe are sturdier. Just saying. On the subject of "perfect" - a question I'd like to put to my customers who want their piece of pie "perfect" I should ask (but I am too polite) - "Are you going to photograph it or eat it"? Homemade is not picture perfect because a machine didn't make it!!!!! Same for produce. A few shot holes in beet greens do not make them less tasty, a wriggly carrot might just be a lot sweeter than a perfectly straight one, an asymmetrical potato grown in a field 10 miles away tastes better than a perfect one shipped from Idaho 2,000 miles away and chemically treated to not sprout so you get to eat that stuff too. As for "locally grown", please ask the farmer where his/her farm is. But, 75 miles is acceptable for my Market which means my 7B can easily be almost zone 8 and a full four weeks earlier in warmth then here! It's OK for me. Ask if you could visit their farm, to drive-by, not inspect. Ask the Market Manager if they visit their vendor's farms to verify where the produce they offer comes from. If they don't it means that the Market is a free-for-all. Produce could be shipped in from China or Brazil or Mexico - not local but selling locally. We have a State Farmers Market and before it opens the sales people line up in the way back to buy bushels of produce that were grown all over the State - mostly by high production commercial farms, not mom and pop ones. Those behind the table taking your money may never have set foot on a farm - they are just employees and what they offer is exactly the same as what the grocery store offers, they get it from the same commercial farms. So, local is relative - it only means from the State of NC to that Market here. If you find a local Market vendor who is the farmer (as my Market verifies) then bypass the grocery store with the perfect-perfect produce and buy the slightly imperfect from your Market. We can't grow rhubarb, lemons, or bananas in NC. If your Market has vendors offering things that don't grow in your State, then go to the grocery store. Donna - I am with you. Importing food and eliminating local farming with the lost knowledge of how-to farm puts our food supply at risk, just like Venezuela. 80% of small farms have disappeared. Here is the reality of farming in the US. Farming Changes in US And, here is why: Small Farms - Young People Not Interested When was the last time you heard some little one say they wanted to grow up to be a farmer? I support the farm vendors at my Market for their small local farm products whose prices are higher than the grocery store....See Moregarliclady
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