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market-farming - RE: [Market-farming] Pricing produce

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  • From: Matt Cheselka <cheselka AT freestateproject.org>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: RE: [Market-farming] Pricing produce
  • Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 15:53:36 -0600 (CST)


Interesting you should ask this right now. I'm happy to announce that I
have my first wholesale client and retail location finalized! The
wholesaler is a co-op in Tucson who like to sell as much local veggies as
they can. The retail location is going to be a table I'll set up at my
local feed store. The guy gets hundreds of customers in on Saturday
mornings, so I'll do it them. Just little 'ol me. No market manager, no
competition (yet). I offered to give him 10% of my sales and he seemed to
like that.

So I'm having to think hard about prices right now, too!

As for how to price stuff. My observation is that retail will get you
aboue twice the price as wholesale. So if I charge $1/head for my leaf
lettuce wholesale, I can probably get $2/head retail. But I, too, will
visit the local Safeway store and see what they're charging for lettuce,
and price my stuff accordingly. People will usually pay more for local
stuff for their own reasons (locally grown, tastes better, it's
"different", etc). I'm only interested in getting enough money to make
this venture sustainable, so my prices won't be as high as what you'd
usually see at farmers' market. I don't care what price people are
"willing" to pay.

For now, I'm going to let my wholesaler set his price and I'll take
whatever he gives me. This'll probably change once I get better at
growin' things. I don't like much the idea of the wholesaler setting the
prices. That's a recipe for disaster. I'm quickly learning that selling
to wholesaler is all about volume. One needs to be able to deliver a
given quantity on a regular basis. The "value" of the veggies, therefore,
is very much connected to the delivery reliability factor.

I'm starting to ramble...

Matt Cheselka
Cosmic Lettuce





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