Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Thai Basil - get rich quick

market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Market Farming

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: robert schuler <sunnfarm AT bellatlantic.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Thai Basil - get rich quick
  • Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 13:05:49 -0400

Craig I have been selling to restaurants for thirty years. The grim reality  is that nobody needs the stuff you or I grow. And nobody has to buy our stuff just because we grew it. And they definitely don't have to pay the price we think our stuff  is worth. You might think you are the only guy growing a certain basil. I can take you on a tour of my county and show you farms growing every type of basil known to man in truckload quantity.
Restaurants have many resources no farther than the telephone, they can get Thai basil flown in from Thailand in less than 48 hours for less than you would charge.

Minor specialty crops are very price sensitive.  For example an extra 100 acres of curly parsley marketed in a day can depress the price I get to zero, this is why I built a roadside farm market it gives me a better handle on prices...Bob.
Sunny Meadow Farm
Bridgeton, NJ.

Craig Gilbert wrote:

I decided to cash-in on the some fifty Thai restaurants near me in Atlanta and grow Thai Basil. The plan was to sell to restaurants. No restaurants wants the Siam Queen variety (learned the hard way in the prior year that an all-american winner does not appeal to the chefs who all critically smelled it and tasted it and declared it was not quite right). So I started about 500 plants of the Seeds of Change Thai Basil. Of course the plan was to sell to restaurants at $5.00 per pound, but the actuality was that the going price was $2.0 a pound. To harvest 20 pounds and deliver to my only two restaurant clients took 2 hours for harvest, packing and preparation. 1 hour delivery, and it delayed me from work another hour or 2.  I earn $50 per hour as a computer guru. To make $40 in Basil cost me approximately $250.  It was very difficult to get restaurant clients. I delivered bags and bags of samples, but got very little interest. They want a check box on a form from their distributor, and get it all delivered at once reliably (regardless of the weather).  It is hard to deliver on Tuesday morning if it is raining when I want to harvest. when I took the Basil to the many Asian groceries, they liked it and offered a whopping .80 cents a pound.  I was producing 50 pounds a week, but I just did not want to go through all the effort for that price.



Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page