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  • From: Jack Moffitt <jackmoffitt AT gmail.com>
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Market-farming] Need Help with Sales
  • Date: Sat, 21 Aug 2010 12:23:32 -0500

To Mark in West Texas -

I feel your pain.
 We found that chefs line up to buy what cooks won't be interested. 
If there is a hamburger on the menu, they probably won't buy from us.
When things were slow in sales,  we spent the off-season getting farmers markets started and visiting chefs.
After about a year, sales outpaced product and now 'rationing strategies' occupy us - how to evenly distribute amongst our customers.
We enjoy shopping pressure from about 4 restaurants who shop the farmers markets we work with, and a couple who don't. Our local Texas Dept of Ag. representative organized a 'Chef to Farm Tour' last fall. Contact your local TDA people, this is a statewide program and resulted in 2-3 of our regular restaurant customers.
If west Texas is anything like south Texas, CSA's don't do well, generate suspicion and hard feelings. Probably this is because our growers lack the years of experience to sustainably fill large orders on a regularly scheduled basis.
Recently the Brad Stufflebeam Yahoo Group (Houston area) spent week discussing a lawsuit by a CSA subscriber against a farmer. A very much beginner farmer from what I could gather.
Most of all repeat this mantra - "If I grow it, they will come"
Jack Moffitt - Tex Mex border - Bayview Texas



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