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market-farming - Re: Roadside Stands

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Subject: Market Farming

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  • From: "jay gee" <jgj23 AT mindspring.com>
  • To: "Market Farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Roadside Stands
  • Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 14:22:12 +0000


Rick Hopkins wrote in part:

> In my humble opinion, the idea we should be promoting is to get consumers to
> understand that cooking skills are not something we are born with and that
> each trip to the kitchen is an experiment. We prepare a great deal of one
> or two pot meals that require no more time than the trips to the market for
> heat and eat and the associated cooking time. It is possible to prepare
> many healthful meals from farm raised foods that require less than 30
> minutes including cleanup.

Trying to promote the fact that cooking skills are learned,
not genetically inherited, is a losing proposition. It is like
trying to promote tooth brushing when you want to sell
tooth brushes. By the time people who don't brush
get the message, your money is gone and you are out
of business. Instead, sell toothbrushes (food).

Travel across the rural U.S. has declined over the years
because people find it faster to fly and families are more
spread out than they used to be. People are no longer
satisfied (for the most part) with the variety provided by
a Sunday drive. Children are hung up on video games
and instant messaging or chat rooms while parents and
grandparents park for hours in front of the tube. For
people in big cities, getting to the country is no longer
a thirty minute drive, it takes an hour or two, depending
on traffic conditions. Web surfing, watching TV or doing
nothing is now easier.

> Many of the marketing attempts for local grown products involve chefs. No
> discredit to the chefs, but we should have farm families showing the
> consumers how to prepare quick and inexpensive meals with our products. Few
> people have the resources in their kitchens that most chefs have and
> therefore while entertaining and educational, cooking demonstrations using
> gourmet cooks don't sell farm fresh foods to consumers.

Chefs, especially TV chefs, have a great deal of value in promoting fresh
ingredients. The problem is that not everybody watches the chefs
in action and many who do are not proximate to your farms.

It is axiomatic to serious marketers to "convince" believers, i.e., direct
your message to people who are leaning in that direction or who are
already interested. Convincing believers is easier than converting them.

If you are serious about marketing directly to consumers and making
a profit while doing it, you must invest at least as much energy in
preparing and carrying your message to consumers as you do in
planning and planting next year's crops.

Your marketing and advertising plan and materials have every bit
as much of an effect on your ability to sell profitably as does the
weather. While you have no control over the weather, you do
have control over how you market and advertise.

Jake's comments about his web site producing customers
confirms what is known: Advertising yields results and
less advertising yields fewer results. It also confirms that
the Web is a low cost way to reach interested consumers.

A web site under your farm name (with your own domain by
the farm name or a variation on it) has real value for distributing
recipes and providing show and tell cooking instructions for
people who are interested. Most of you know someone with
a digital camera and could make your own "cooking show"
web pages in your own kitchens to support your on or off
farm sales if you took the time to learn lighting and staging
techniques. Clean pots and pans are needed, because most
consumers don't have $200,000 kitchens. I AM NOT
suggesting that this be done in full motion video.

I know I am boring some of you now, so I'll end this
message, but if others are interested, provoke me
by starting a new thread with the subject "Web Show
and Tell" and we can hash this out some more
because Winter is around the corner again.

Hope you are all well,

Jay Gee
not a farmer -- but interested in farming







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