Market Farming

[Alex McGregor <waldenfarm AT sprintmail.com>]

Wilderness Flowers wrote:

> >Nothing slows sales down then a partially filled container.  If I sold out,
> I didn't bring enough.

Something I learned from the produce manager of a food co-op, where I was the 
store
manager, is to keep produce bins full. He said that if he let the broccoli 
(for example)
get down to only a few heads in the display cooler, no more would sell that 
day. If he
kept it full, we sold 10-12 cases a day. He called this the "cornucopia 
effect."

I adapted this to selling at a market by carrying extra baskets of various 
sizes. When
there were lulls in the action, I put vegies in smaller baskets. The half 
bushel of
whatever is more appealing to customers spilling out of a half bushel basket 
than in a
half full bushel basket.

The main thing is to keep working your produce. Cull the wilted or mangled 
and keep the
containers and display shelves full. I decrease display size as the day wears 
on. You can
also give away the less than perfect and mangled as freebies- buys more good 
will and
repeat sales than cash does.

And the gallon jugs of water rotated through our chest freezer work great! We 
fill them
with our filtered drinking water for cold drinks during the market, and they 
keep the
greens cool. I made boxes out of scrap plywood and lined them with 1/2" 
styrene
insulation board on the inside. The insulation is a friction fit so I can 
take it out for
cleaning the boxes.

Happy Marketing!

Alex McGregor
Walden Farm
Walden Ridge, TN