Price Your Product at a Farmers' Market
According people with knowledge about current food markets, the small local venues known as farmers' markets are quickly taking off these local markets are providing fresh foods for many shoppers in all sorts of places. But the job of selling produce or other products at farmers' markets can be tough, and some of the critical startup work begins with pricing goods effectively. Some farmers are not used to setting their own prices for garden products or other merchandise, but they can get effective advice from many different places. These basic steps will help to price your product at a farmers' market and profit from good merchandise valuation.
Steps
- Do market research. Start out with some proactive methods of measuring what consumers in a given area will pay for their produce, meat, eggs or other food items, or anything else that you want to sell a farmers' market.
- Use consumer surveys. Well-crafted surveys are a vital part of figuring out what prices will be tolerated in a given farmers' market setting.
- Get vendor information. When possible, conduct informal surveys at farmers' markets to see what other vendors are charging for different kinds of products.
- Cover your costs. When pricing farmers' market products, make sure that what you charge covers all of the costs put into producing and transporting the goods. Otherwise, the fledgling business will not be able to continue offering products to customers.
- Take fuel costs and other portions of your expenses into account. A critical part of pricing any merchandise is understanding what the producer pays out in order to bring the goods to market. Price in specific extras to get a profit margin and stay in business.
- Price goods to compete. For the most successful outcomes, produce and other farmers' market products should be priced in accordance with what others are selling. Excessively high prices will lead to extremely low sales of items, and prices that are too low may not cover operational costs.
- Post prices clearly. Some experts indicate that the best and most successful farmers' market stands list all prices for their products clearly, so that consumers can easily figure out what they have to pay and how much they can afford.
- Follow all applicable rules from farmers' market creators. Specific markets have their own rules and regulations about selling products.
- Keep scales handy at a booth that sells by volume. When selling farmers' market products by the pound, it's helpful to have a precise, working set of scales. Some farmers' markets require this, and some don't, but in any case, these tools can help with any kind of sale by weight.
- Answer price questions. Be prepared to answer any questions from customers about how your merchandise is priced, and why. Farmers' market booth keepers who can come up with good responses to consumer questions will ultimately be able to sell more products and stay in business in a competitive environment.
