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Farmers Market Economics

9/3/2013

5 Comments

 
We've now been attending the Saturday Mount Vernon Farmers Market for 8 weeks, and it's a good time to reflect on how we've done.
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Our net revenue from the market has averaged $74, and while there has been considerable volatility in sales, the most we've brought in is $110. We've never come close to selling out of the produce we bring each week. The market itself is open for four hours (9-1) and to get everything loaded up, set up, broken down, and put away, requires about 7.5 hours. Although Jen is selling at the market for free right now, to balance out the revenue with labor costs, I'd have to pay a maximum of $10/hour. There are of course tons of other costs and labor requirements to get the product from seed to market. I detailed most of them here, so I won't go into detail again. Suffice to say, when all the labor and expenses are added up, we're somewhere between just breaking even and making a couple of dollars per hour.

While it's always disappointing to be making such a little return on your investment of time and capital, I'm not really surprised. If you read some of my earlier blog posts, you'll note that I was always skeptical about the farmers market model for selling produce. It just seemed that there was too much competition for the same stuff, and the stuff wasn't very high value to begin with. This is exactly what we're finding at the Mt. Vernon Farmers Market this year. There are lots of other vendors with mixed vegetables, and many of those people sell their vegetables as a hobby, so they're not worried about making little money. In addition, many of the vendors have been attending the market for 20 years, which makes it hard for us to cut into their market share.

We chose to do a market this year because it was the easiest thing for us to do with limited time for planning after moving to our new farm. We wanted to get our name out into the community and have a venue for marketing our pork, so it seemed like a low risk investment of our time. To that end, it has been successful, but you probably won't be seeing us at another farmers market next year. With every experience, we learn and reevaluate.


5 Comments
George
9/3/2013 03:27:36 am

Are there other markets in your area? $110 a week is a pretty slow market IMO. I've sold at ones with only 9 vendors, and ones with over 40... worst week was just breaking $200, all vegetables mind you....

A good market should bring you $300 easily.

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bruce king link
9/3/2013 03:59:55 am

The downtown Everett farmers market is bigger, more customers, as are various markets in seattle. Most of the vendors at the markets (both Snoco and King counties) consider a couple of hours of car time to be a normal commute to a good market; so you'll see a lot of eastern Washington farmers making the drive to the west side for better access to the city revenue.

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Jeff
9/3/2013 06:36:26 am

There are a great deal of other markets in the area, so many that there's issues with market dilution. We picked Mt. Vernon because it was the closest, as well as the fact that we wanted to establish our farm and brand in our community. The Seattle farmers markets are much better attended, and less people have personal gardens, but as Bruce pointed out, they're a 3 hour roundtrip (in no traffic) drive away. The increased revenue would likely outweigh the cost in time, fuel, and vehicle depreciation. The Eastern Washington farmers have a 4-16 hour roundtrip, although some have warehouses in Seattle.

Depending on the distance traveled, I figure we need to make at least $400-500 per market to make it worth our time. That's getting close to $10,000 in revenue over a 20 week season.

We haven't decided exactly what we're going to do next year, but we're keeping all our options on the table for now.

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Walt link
9/3/2013 12:19:29 pm

We've been selling pork at local farmers markets for a couple years now. Some are busy, others are slow. The biggest benefit to us has been getting our name out. People who first tried our pork at the farmers market are now loyal customers. The exposure we got at the farmers market has also led to potential deals selling pork at a restaurant and a small grocery store. So think of it as time spent marketing. It can pay off in the end.

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George
9/3/2013 08:51:09 pm

What does your stand/display look like? How are your prices compared to other vendors, supermarkets, etc etc?

You come home with a lot of product yet, have you tried trading with local business at/near the market? (I used to trade leftover veggies, for homemade cake, cookies, potatoes, meat, etc).

The market is also how I connected to local chefs. The marketing IS invaluable as Walt pointed out.

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