Market Farming

[Lucy Goodman-Owsley <goodows AT excite.com>]

On Wed, 16 Feb 2000 18:04:57 -0500, market farming wrote:

>  This is a post I made to another list on the subject of organic
>  produce costing more & why.  But I often wonder if the perception of
>  fm customers is that all fm produce should be cheap-whether
>  conventional, sustainable, organic & natural!
>  
One of the farmer's markets I sell at has the "It's a FM so everything must
be cheap" I explain to people that complain that we don't really have
anything comparable to a grocery store. Everything is far fresher, the
varieties cannot be found at the store and the customer gets to actually
talk to the grower plus we give cooking tips and recipes. In other words, we
give the customer a lot more than a grocery store possibly could. That in
itself is worth more money.

Still we get detractors which my husband tells me to ignore, but still when
someone complains about our prices I want to drop them. Fortunatly he won't
let me.

One thing we will do is tell our complainers that we don't make minimum wage
doing what we are doing-for our regular customers I have actually sent out a
paper stating what we made versus what we spent. That has opened several
eyes as many folks really did think we were getting rich from organic
growing/farming.

The other farmer's market is full of customers that are there to buy local
and organic, they could care less what we charge and have actually said we
charge too little for some things. they look at FM's as the place to get
better food than what the grocery has to offer. This FM is also in a small
college town.

We also sell to a resturant and at first the chef did not like our high
prices and would complain that we charged twice what the food distibutors
were charging. At the same time he did notice that our salad mix tasted and
looked far better than anything else he could get and lasted up to 3 weeks
versus under 5 days for the commercial crap. When I pointed this out he
willingly paid our price.

I guess it is all a process of education one's customers and realising that
our food is not for everyone. There will always be the old timers that
charge 1060's prices and the dumpers who either have no idea what to charge
or are from a big wholesale operation. Defense against those folks is to
more unique and have better tasting/quality food and service


Lucy Goodman-Owsley
Boulder Belt CSA
New Paris, OH
Website: http://www.angelfire.com/oh2/boulderbeltcsa
Organic Farming and Gardening Forum:
http://www.InsideTheWeb.com/mbs.cgi/mb135705
Want Social Change? Join a CSA!





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