Selling your farm products at a farmers market
June 18, 2008
Farmers markets are perfect for direct marketing. Consider selling at any farmers market within one hours driving time. Your State Department of Agriculture should have a list of markets.
The biggest advantage of selling at a farmers market, is that you’ll find lots of consumers in one place. It is much easier to sell a little bit of produce to a lot of customers than a lot of produced to a few customers. If you have something new and different from the rest of the market, provide taste samples to the customers. Recipes featuring your produce are also a good marketing strategy.
The major disadvantages to farmers markets are the cost and time. Time spent at the market is time not spent on the farm. When you figure all of your expenses - production costs, fees, labor, and transportation - selling here may not be cost-effective. Count your pennies carefully.
Check out the market the season before you intend to sell there. See what the farmers are raising, and what they are not. Is there anything missing - yellow or purple snap beans, or heirloom tomatoes. Talk to farmers and customers to see what is needed that you could raise. This is a good place to start.
If there is no farmers market in your area, consider starting one. Evaluate the customer potential, determine the exhibitor potential, and design a charter - all these are very important. Decide fees, dates, and hours, and investigate insurance and location. This entails a lot of work and requires community support. If you do start a farmers market, holding special events at it - bake sales, festivals, concerts - can be an additional way to draw revenue. Finally, a farmers market will require the same thing you do - advertising, to let people know it is there.
[…] On the my farm, I sell hogs at $.80 a pound liveweight, which means about $100 for half of a hog, with the customer paying for the processing. Processing costs run between $35 and $45, depending on how the customer wants his meat cut and whether he wants any cured meat. Alternatively, I sell 80% lean sausage at a flat $2.50 per pound, and get about 100 pounds of sausage from a 250 pound hog. I sold all my pork sausage here in the midst of 10 cent hog prices at the local sale barn. Customers were willing to pay premium prices for quality meat. My pork is fresher and leaner, all my hogs were raised on pasture and not given any antibiotics or growth hormones. My pork comes from happy hogs, and my customers know it. …NEXT […]