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  • From: Carla Maness <manessfarm AT gmail.com>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] selling to restaurants
  • Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2012 17:37:34 -0500

Thank you all for your responses. Last year we sold cherry tomatoes to a restaurant, but the chef came down to the market, and paid retail price. We didn't even realize he was a chef until he told he was buying "for the restaurant". This year, a different chef has approached us, but he heard about us from the "other" chef.  Both are local restaurants, and really seem to want to buy local food.
The chef from last year never balked at our prices so maybe the new chef won't either. 
Our farmers market sets up in a park which is practically in the restaurants backyard, so I'm hoping the chef will come to market and shop just like our other guy does. We'll see though. It's exciting to think about!

Carla
Perkins, OK

On Fri, Mar 23, 2012 at 12:53 PM, Richard Stewart <rstewart AT zoomtown.com> wrote:
I am reposting this since it never seemed to post.

We love selling to restaurants.  Some loathe it.  I think it all depends on how hands on you want to be.  Our pricing for chefs is pretty much wholesale.  Its easy, its a quick delivery (we gang them all up together and then do charge for delivery using Google maps to plot the most efficient routes), and most pay COD.

In the end they are simply ONE part of a multi faceted income stream.

We sell to chefs (this can mean a wide range of things from 1000.00 orders to 25.00 drop offs of a single item), retailers (anybody that takes our product ad resells it...again this varies from Whole Foods to a small little Vegan place that serves a neighborhood of a couple hundred...maybe a thousand people), at a single farmers' market (we rate it the third best in the region overall and second best during winter), and then what I label on my spreadsheets as "others" which ranges from an artisan soap maker that wants herbs and honey, a chocolatier, a couple bakers, and fermenting company (I should probably call the category "producers").

The percentage of our 2011 sales breaks down like this:


Retail                  39%
Farmer's Market 30%
Restaurant              28%
Other                   3%

Chefs were our biggest source of revenue but we have started working a lot with several retailers including Whole Foods that have just exploded for us.  A lot of this has to do with the economy and the demand for local foods at all levels.   Restaurants took a heavy hit in this poor economy.  In the end we supply three of the top four chefs/restaurants in Cincinnati.  They range in style from 100% local food head to simply sourcing locally for a menu that disregards seasonality (we do not quibble about why, just happy that they do).

If you start wholesaling then you better have an exact grasp of what it costs you to grow an ounce of herbs or a pound of greens.  We've stopped doing some of our own transplants for the simple fact that I can get nice quality organic certified starts for less than it costs us to do them ourselves.  A year ago, with less firm numbers I would have argued that the reverse was true.

I'll argue that ANY business is good business is good business starting out.  Take the small stuff even when you are taking a small loss because it'll get your foot in the door and when farmer X suddenly runs out of greens and you are flush with them you step up and start supplying them.  Bide your time and be a good supplier and things get better.  Figure it will take three years to develop a good base.

I'd also like to add that if you are not currently an LLC or S Corp or equivalent then I would strongly consider doing this.  Once you leave the farm stand or FM your need to start thinking more as a farm business and not family farmstead.  You need to start focusing on GAP as well.  You'll need insurance for some and IRS paperwork and the like.

Richard Stewart
Carriage House Farm
North Bend, Ohio

An Ohio Century Farm Est. 1855

(513) 967-1106
http://www.carriagehousefarmllc.com
rstewart AT zoomtown.com


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