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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Certified scales

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  • From: Home Grown Kansas! <hgkansas AT sbcglobal.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Certified scales
  • Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 07:01:31 -0800 (PST)

Hello,
We work under a 20' x 30' canopy at our Saturday market.  There are five folks working in our booth to help customers.  Because of the busy market we maintain several scales to keep business flowing smoothly.  Of course, when lines get deep it is always a hectic situation.  One scale is kept behind the booth to allow the person who is stocking the displays to weigh items into containers or to package product that was not packaged the night before.  Scales are also located at the display tables for weighing items such as tomatoes, peaches, eggplant, peppers, squash, etc.  Another scale is kept at the bulk displays (such as potatoes), so that customers can weigh their own potatoes - this works very well.  To accelerate the selling experience, thin plastic produce bags (like the ones you find in a grocery store) are hung in many places along the displays.  The regular customers who know what to expect and know what they want, will just pull bags, fill them and present them for checkout when they are finished - just like at the grocery store.  The regular customers even help some of the new folks in discovering how to speed up the sales experience.  Watermelons are sold by the each - such as $5/melon - Cantaloupe is weighed and marked with a price - most other items are weighed at the time of the sale.  We do not weigh at market for tracking the weights - we weigh at market because it is the fairest way to sell product - market is far to busy for record keeping.  This system has worked very well for us for the past 16 years - each year we try to tweak it as much as possible.  
 
Our goal is to sell product at market.  We are not looking for more customers, although we like them, we are looking to sell more product to each customer that enters the booth.  I have found since we started in this business that Americans and many growers themselves are ignorant of food.  Primarily when to harvest and how to prepare fresh produce.  For example we increase the sales of winter squash, which is not a big seller on the Prairie, by simply printing up some small cards with a recipe.  It is astonishing how many folks have not tried or at least don't  think they have, basil pesto.  It is a pleasing site to see several customers have conversations on how to prepare an item.  By educating the customers, sales increase.
 
I don't find weighing to be a hassle, I find weighing to be part of the process of doing the job right.  On the other hand if you have a method that works for you - I suggest that you do just that, for all markets are different. 
 
Good luck to all,
Elzie
Home Grown Kansas! LLC
Wichita, Kansas


"cjmaness AT juno.com" <cjmaness AT juno.com> wrote:
Maybe that is what it is. The time. When I got to thinking about it,
I realized that my husband and I are swamped, from the time we get to
market until we leave. If we had to stop and weigh out everything,
well I honestly don't know how we would do it. With every thing
sitting out on the table in those pints and quarts our customers
point to what they want, we grab and bag. It is very difficult for
one of us to run the stand. It takes both of us. Lots of times one of
us will wait on the customers while the other is refilling the
containers. It's non stop for us, and probably most of the other
vendors at our market. I personally have never checked with the dept
of ag. about certifying the scales. I was going by what the other
vendors were telling me. They have all been doing this much longer
than we have so... I know from the record keeping perspective it
would be much easier if we knew how many pounds of tomatoes or
whatever we were actually taking to market.
Carla

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