I am growing both this year but for next year just do the pole beans. Way easier to pick and it doesn't take up as much space as the bush beans do. I am growing yellow, green and purple.
Hope that helps

I have only grown the bush type of bean, but am considering the pole type due to picking ease. I grown yellow, purple and green. My customers prefer the bush types. There is a fellow vendor that grows the pole type (he's 80) and he isn't able to sell the pole beans as easily.

As far as the actual beans are concerned what is the difference between pole and bush. Texture, size, shape? How do the customers know the difference?

I grow mostly bush. They produce heavily all at once. I can get several pickings off them before they're spent, and have turned the space over as many as three times in one season. The pole beans produce over the entire season, but more sparingly. I do a lot of canning, so it's easy to see I want a large amount of beans coming on at one time. It's sort of like the difference between determinate and indeterminate tomatoes. If you want lots of fruit all at once, you grow determinates. If you want less production over a longer time frame, you grow indeterminates.

I also don't want to have the trouble, expense of poling them up. Space isn'ts a factor in my gardens.

Yes, customers will often ask for a bean by name. They'll know a top crop from a provider. Beans shape and age when you have to harvest comes into play. Do you want a long slender bean? One you have to pick early to keep it from being tough? Does it string up if left too long? I know I had trouble with the provider bush bean. It looked wonderful in the basket, but if you kept it on the plant as long as a top crop, it stringed up and got tough.

I have found that 'pole' beans are larger and more plump. Lots of them are not stringless. My customers like TopCrop, Provider, Blue Lake. Some of the newer varieties, like Strike, Jade, Bronco are good thinner beans.

I grew pole beans this year for market but I discovered that they are not such a good idea in my area due to the Mexican bean beetles. I don't use any pesticides on my crops so the problem with pole beans is that they last all season and become a bean beetle habitat. With bush beans it seems like the beetles don't bother them too much until they start to bloom, (perhaps they smell the blossoms?) But then the crop normally only last for about two weeks so the harvest is usually done as the beetles are getting bad so I rip the plants out and move on to the next succession. I may also try floating row covers at some point and those would be difficult to use on pole beans.

Bush, it is what my customer prefer