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.
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.
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.
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