Welcome back to Twin Row On Twelve! In my last post I shared that my husband and I just bought twelve acres of raw land in the beautiful Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. We started a market garden almost four years ago with the goal of being profitable selling produce and microgreens at 2 farmers markets each week. Today, I’m going to share with you the top five things we learned selling at farmers markets and why we no longer sell there! Let me preface by saying we LOVE the farmers market and we love growing food, too! BUT, for us, it has to be more than just something fun that we do on the side. Life is expensive and with our overarching goal of having land and building our family home, we are forced to look at the profitability of our hobbies and make sure the ways that we are spending our time aligns with the end goal.
#1 Get To Know The Other Market Vendors
The number one (and coolest, in my opinion) thing we learned when selling at farmers markets was it was a lot less competitive than we thought. There are many overlapping products that vendors sell and rather than be met with competition, we were met with kindness. Now, obviously, this experience could be different at different markets, but we were surrounded with some of the most beautifully kind people I’ve ever met. Our first experience, and what truly changed my perspective, was with the Ginter Family Farm. This was a husband and wife team who grew almost identical products to us. I saw them at the first market we went to and when I saw their table, I immediately said to myself…uh oh, they probably aren’t going to be happy to see us here. Prior to us being at the market, it looked like they were the only other ones selling microgreens and we had similar produce. We each had several products that were different than each other, but SO many were the same. Not only did I make up the narrative I thought they would be having in their own minds, I had already decided they were our competition, too, and it was something that I had “win.” Boy, was I wrong. These folks welcomed us. They came over to our table, talked to us and we quickly bonded over what growing practices we each used and things we did differently. I even fessed up to thinking they wouldn’t like us and their immediate reaction was to dismiss that way of thinking and tell us there is room for everyone. They invited us over to their farm, into their home and shared with us all the things they do even knowing that they could lose some of their microgreens business to us. At the time, we were growing everything for the markets in our small suburban backyard. Rob really wanted to grow pumpkins, but these are huge sprawling plants that truly would have taken over our whole yard. He set up at his market next to a man who had lots of land. In talking to him about wanting to grow pumpkins he didn’t think twice about offering up some space at his property for us to grow pumpkins. In this case, he sold honey and maple syrup so there was no competition in products, but what I would assumed would be an inconvenience to have us growing there, was just an open door. Both of these experiences truly changed my thought processes and how I hope to be able to show someone else this same type of community and kindness.
#2 Get To Know Your Customers
When you’re selling at a market and people are walking through it is SO easy for people to gaze at your table from a distance. They may already have in mind what they are looking for or are used to buying from the same vendors each week. As a new vendor I made it a point to get to know people who came to my table. I would try really hard to remember their name or something they mentioned to me the previous week as a way to connect the following week. I noticed that having people at your table attracted other people so finding a way to draw people in was pivotal and I feel it really increased my sales. I enjoy talking to people so being the first mover in terms of starting a conversation was no problem!
# 3 Know Your Market and Fill The Gaps
Before we started selling at the market, we visited to see what other people were selling. At that point we had already started growing some of the things we planned to sell so we were really just trying to keep a pulse on what we were walking into. So while we got to see what all was there, we really wanted to see what was NOT there. We wanted to have at least a couple of things that someone could only find under our tent! Plenty of vendors had green beans, but not everyone had dragon beans like we did. The purple speckles caught the eye of shoppers as they passed by and the attention definitely gained us some sales. Especially from the younger crowd – nothing will make a mother buy something quicker than when their preschooler is acting excited to try a new vegetable!
#4 Sell From Abundance
Having a full table is key. This was probably the biggest thing I learned from a sales perspective while at the markets. People want to shop from a full, colorful, attractive table.
Rob and I chose to divide and conquer, going to different markets each week at the same time with the mindset of having a larger pool of buyers to sell to. Some weeks Rob had to work or for one reason or another there was only one market to go to and everything we harvested that week would all go to the same market rather than be split. The week’s we went only to one market had very close to the same sales numbers (and sometimes even higher sales) than the weeks we went to both markets. The saying “pile it high and watch it fly” was proven to be true for us.
#5 Track Your Numbers
I know people enjoy selling at markets for all different types of reasons, but making extra money was at the top of my list. We had goals of saving enough money up so that I could stay home with children when we had them, to buy land, and build a house and still be able to build up our savings. We’ve done two of those things so far and I believe it’s in large part to keeping up with the numbers. When you look at numbers, you have actual data that can help you make good decisions. That can be true in business and in life in general. I tracked our start up costs, operating costs, revenue, profits and our time spent working directly on farm activities. It’s easy to overlook some of these things especially if it’s something you enjoy doing. Rob and I both had full time jobs at the time we were doing markets and so we could easily afford the expenses that came with starting and selling at markets, but the goal was to have the farm pay for the farm and eventually make us money. There are plenty of things you need to start growing. If you are starting from scratch you’ll need soil, amendments, seeds, ways to trellis, row cover for frosty nights, hoses and other tools. There is a whole other slew of things you need to be able to sell at markets – Tables, tents, signage, coolers, ice packs, packaging, a way to accept credit cards if you choose. All these things add up and to pay for this in bags of salad or bunches of carrots was tough. Every week I tracked every single thing we sold and by the end of the season I had enough data to know without a doubt that selling at a farmers market was not a profitable venture for us. If we did it again, I feel confident we would be more profitable because we could make changes from things we learned. Even if we did that the time we would have to spend on certain activities wouldn’t change. While there are lots of wonderful things about the market and great reasons you may want to sell at a farmers markets, I would just urge everyone to look at all the true costs of make a good decision for your farm.
That doesn’t mean we quit selling, it just means that we quit selling at the markets. For now at least. We still grow microgreens and we have plans to grow other produce again once we have a well at our new property. We currently sell microgreens directly to restaurants and grocers in our area. The time we spent displaying our goods at markets in hopes that they would sell is now spent delivering things to customers that are already sold. If I could go back and choose again whether or not to do farmers markets I would still do it even though it didn’t make us the money I wanted it to. We made awesome friends, learned a lot about the growing process, built up our microgreens business and never have to look back and wonder “what if.” So while, selling at the market wasn’t exactly profitable for us, I still count it as a win!
Prefer to watch? Check out our YouTube video Here! And be sure to watch until the end for our blooper reel!
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