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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] those pesky tomato stems: now packaging and pricing

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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] those pesky tomato stems: now packaging and pricing
  • Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2010 12:52:40 -0400


On Oct 1, 2010, at 11:34 AM, Jay Sleichter wrote:

I guess the reason I sell by the pound is I don't have the man power at my booth to keep refilling baskets and take money. 


For a short time many years ago I took scales to market. Weighing everything slowed me down so much I went back to selling by the pint, quart, (etc) and each.

It probably didn't help that nobody else brings scales to these markets, so the customers weren't used to it.

I sell heirloom tomatoes by the each (or the flat: 8 quart cardboard carrier, single layer, which is how I pack most of the heirlooms for market); cherry tomatoes (and tomatillos) by the pint or half pint; paste tomatoes and non-heirloom slicing types by the quart, peck, or half bushel. If a customer wants less than a quart, I go by the number of that variety that mostly fits in a quart: those Big Beef had 4 tomatoes in the box @ 4.00 and you want one of them?  that's 1.00 each (adjusted somewhat for size of the tomato.) Judging price on the heirlooms by size is a little tricky and I suspect I'm sometimes losing money on this, but the expense of the kind of scale that wouldn't slow me down much would be considerable and time is definitely a consideration as I'm often doing the market alone.


-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale






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