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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] charging what the market will bear

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  • From: HackettShark AT aol.com
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] charging what the market will bear
  • Date: Wed, 5 Feb 2003 09:33:55 EST

In a message dated 2/5/03 5:13:56 AM Central Standard Time, mckemie AT austinfarm.org writes:


Sounds like your problem is more one of "peddlers in your market"
rather than "vendors selling too cheap".



Well, they usually don't show up next week, after they see you double their price and and sell out.  O I hate peddlers to a passion especially the ones that bring in melons to a market a month ahead of time, or tomatoes that come out of Texas boxes, and the vendor stands there and tells the customer that they have tomatoes because they are better farmers than anyone else in the market. 

We have people come in with tomatoes for a 1.00 a lug, it is easy to buy these people out so they will just go home, why fight with them, they are really very stupid to sell at a price like this when everyone else is getting a 2.00 a pound.  The sweet corn happened in a market that I manage and she was trying to sell for 1.00 doz when everyone else was selling at 3.00 so Ken and I just split her load and that way we didn't have to deal with her, she never came back and was told not to come back.

I don't know of a market that someone is not growing a thing and is still allowed to sell and I know of no legal way to keep them out.  But if they come in and want to give it away then we should have the right to buy them out and throw it away if we want just to get them out a market, and I have done that, if the quality is real poor I have bought their tables out and carried it to a dumpster in front  of them and then tell them to leave the market, they usually will go back to their street corner and leave our market alone.  This has worked a couple of times.  Had a guy trying to sell very over ripe melons, they really stunk, he only wanted 1.00 for them, I bought them told him to carry them over to the dumpster, I gave him 20.00 and have never seen him again, I was able to sell all my melons that day for 4.00 each and didn't have to listen to any complains about his junk the next week.

With 20 acres of produce I don't have to buy anything  except a lot of seed and this is also the reason I have got rather sick of some of the things that are allowed to take place in this business.  There are the people that seem to think that if you are Organic you can charge what you want for some of produce, they complain that my prices are too cheap.  My rule of thumb is double the grocery store prices.

Phil



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