If you’re a small farmer or home gardener looking to diversify your product offerings at the farmers market, consider selling plants, seeds, and seedlings. These products can be a great addition to your booth and can appeal to a wide range of customers, from seasoned gardeners to those just starting out.
One way to sell plants at the farmers market is to offer a selection of potted plants, either annuals or perennials. These can be plants that you have grown from seed or that you have propagated from cuttings. Be sure to label the plants clearly, indicating the type of plant, its care requirements, and any unique features or benefits.
Selling seeds can be a great way to reach a wider audience, as customers can take the seeds home and start their own gardens. Consider offering a range of seeds, including vegetables, herbs, and flowers. You might also consider offering seedlings, which are young plants that have already been started from seed. This can be a great option for customers who want to get a jump start on their gardening season.
When selling plants, seeds, and seedlings at the farmers market, be sure to have plenty of information on hand to help customers choose the right products for their needs. This might include information on the care requirements for different types of plants, tips for starting seeds, and ideas for creative plant combinations.
Overall, selling plants, seeds, and seedlings at the farmers market can be a great way to diversify your income!
As the weather gets colder and the harvest season comes to an end, many small farmers and home gardeners start thinking about preserving their excess produce for the winter months. Canning is a great way to extend the shelf life of your fruits and vegetables and enjoy the taste of summer all year round. It’s also a great opportunity to create value-added products that can be sold at farmers markets.
If you’re interested in making and selling canned goods at a farmers market, here are a few things to consider:
Choose the right produce: Not all fruits and vegetables are suitable for canning. Stick to produce that is in season and at its peak of ripeness, as this will result in the best-tasting canned goods.
Follow proper canning techniques: Canning is a science, and it’s important to follow proper canning techniques to ensure the safety of your products. This includes using the right equipment, such as a water bath canner or pressure canner, and following proper sterilization and sealing procedures.
Choose the right containers: Glass jars are the most common containers for canned goods, but you might also consider using tin cans or other types of packaging. Be sure to choose containers that are the appropriate size for your products and that seal properly.
Price your products appropriately: Consider the cost of your ingredients and labor, as well as the going rate for similar products at your local farmers market, when pricing your canned goods. You may also want to consider offering bulk discounts or bundle deals to encourage customers to buy in larger quantities.
Promote your products: Be sure to let customers know about your canned goods and highlight any unique selling points, such as locally-grown produce or unique flavors. Consider creating eye-catching labels or signage to draw attention to your products.
By following these tips, you can make and sell canned goods successfully at a farmers market. Not only will you be able to share your delicious products with customers, but you’ll also be able to extend the shelf life of your produce and create a value-added product that can help your business thrive.
It is possible for cakes to sell well at farmers markets, but it depends on various factors such as the location of the market, the type of cake being sold, and the competition. Some things to consider when selling cakes at a farmers market include:
Offering a variety of cakes: It may be helpful to have a range of cake flavors and sizes to appeal to different customers and occasions. For example, you could offer small individual-sized cakes as well as larger cakes that can be shared.
Displaying the cakes attractively: Presentation is important when selling cakes at a farmers market. Consider using display stands or boxes to showcase the cakes and make them look appealing.
Pricing the cakes appropriately: It is important to consider the cost of ingredients and labor when pricing your cakes. You should also consider the going rate for cakes at your local farmers market and adjust your prices accordingly.
Providing samples: Offering samples of your cakes can be a good way to attract customers and encourage them to make a purchase.
Overall, it is important to do market research and consider your target audience when deciding whether or not to sell cakes at a farmers market. If you have a unique or high-quality product and a good marketing strategy, you may be able to sell cakes successfully at a farmers market.
Fruit and berries are always a favorite at a farmer’s market. Blueberry, strawberry, blackberry etc are all popular seasonal berries that customers love to buy fresh. If you are in an area where fruit is grown then that is another possibility to sell. Friends of mine had some wonderful peach orchards and would sell them by the bucket or case. Depending on your climate you can sell fruit successfully at the farmers
Vegetables
Most people at some stage will have a vegetable garden. Some people grow vegetables that are surplus to their needs. Many other people don’t like to garden or have limited space at their homes or apartments but will still enjoy buying and eating local fresh vegetables. Over the years I have seen many local farmers sell thousands of dollars’ worth of vegetables at local farmers market. These farmers will bring as much produce as they can and often sell it all. A friend of mine used to bring a large enclosed trailer full of tray after tray and box after box of tomatoes, squash, watermelon, peppers and so much more he would usually go home with nothing left except a pocketful of cash. He was one of the biggest vendors at the market and people respected that he had a good product and they would line-up to buy from him.
While that particular farmer was very versatile, he grew a large variety of produce, other farmers specialized. One of the specialist farmers I saw at the farmers market brought chest freezers on the back of a trailer full of gallon and quart bags of frozen shells this farmer grew nothing but peas, had a pea sheller that he would run through the week bag and freeze the fresh peas. These were purple hull peas mainly and he would bring the whole big chest freezer to market and sell them as a frozen quart bag.
Another specialist farmer brought only corn. The corn was not husked, and it was exceptionally good. Customers lined up early to get the corn from that vendor.
Other smaller farmers would just grow a few tomatoes, squash, peas etc and bring whatever was surplus to their own family’s needs to market. Whichever fresh produce vendor you are there is no doubt that you can be successful selling vegetables at the farmers market.
If you know how to make and smoke sausage and its good, then you can make money at a farmer’s market. Whether it be deer or beef, pork etc sausage is always a favorite.
Have some samples ready on a hot electric skillet for customers to taste. The smell will travel throughout the market and they will come back for more and eventually start lining up to buy from you!
Friends of mine sold Sausage at the Farmers Market using that very process. As well as customers my friends sold a lot of sausage to vendors for breakfast. This is a good product to sell!
Take beef jerky to market. A lot of people enjoy grabbing a bag of cheap beef jerky at the market. We bought ourselves a dehydrator, marinated some beef and dehydrated overnight. We packaged this in Ziploc bags and sold by the bag.
Flavors included regular which was a soy sauce-based flavor, teriyaki and spicy. We bought our meat roasts and sliced it thin on a commercial style meat slicer. We marinated the meat for several hours, drained and patted dry and dehydrated overnight in our American harvest dehydrator. We used a small kitchen scale to ensure some consistency of packaging and sold by the ounce.
Beef Jerky is popular at the farmers market. People that love beef jerky will usually try a sample. Have samples of all of your flavors ready for people to taste. Keep them sealed for freshness and sanitation
What to sell at a farmers market is always a tricky question. 2 things come in to play here. What can you make or grow and what does the customer want? There is no point in making the world’s best widget if at the market no one wants to buy a widget or a bucket full of widgets.
This is where you need to be flexible and resourceful. If you are neither flexible or resourceful you need to find another market for your widgets!!
When I first started going to a farmers’ market I took a number of different products. Looking back I was testing the market. I didn’t even realize that I was doing this. I made jam, peanut brittle, smoked salmon, beef jerky, bread, muffins, lemonade. Whatever my wife and I cooked that was REALLY GOOD, we would make and take to market.
Eventually the question of what to sell at the farmers’ market was decided for us by the market customers as they showed us what they wanted to buy and therefore what we should make and take!
It really didn’t matter to me what I took to market as long as I brought none of it or little home.
Over many years of selling at the Farmers’ Markets the main thing that we have gained as a family is family fun! Sure we have made profits and friends and learned some valuable life lessons too. But most of all we have had a lot of FUN.
I enjoy talking to people and hanging out. The customers at a Farmers’ Market are often driven to be there by their belief of buying local, good home made or home grown food, maybe even organic food. Talking about my product and sharing my own thoughts and ideals is lots of fun! I give lots of information and even ideas. I’m originally from Australia and of course I get all of the questions about my country of origin and how I ended up in Louisiana and so forth. My products are of very high quality and my presentation is also. People enjoy talking about the wonderful tastes and flavors that my products bring. We also talk about the difference between homemade baked goods where you know the ingredients and store bought baked goods where you can’t pronounce most of the ingredients.
There is nothing quite like preparing for a Farmers’ Market and then the satisfaction afterwards of knowing that you sold everything that you made, enjoyed fresh air, good company and basically had a blast with your wife and kids.
The market that I mainly attend only operates during summer and fall. Summer in Louisiana can be hot and humid. Not can be , it IS HOT and HUMID. So its great to get out in the morning and have a good time at market before the heat of the day kicks in. The weather is nice, it does get a little warm (HOT) in summer but apart from that its pleasant for the customers and vendors to be out and about on a Saturday morning. The Fall Market has some degree of coolness as we head towards winter and that is always a nice change when we first start back up after our little break between the summer and fall markets.
PROFIT
Of course I like to make some money. We all do don’t we? Profit at a farmers’ market depends on one thing and one thing alone. Taking to market a product that people want to buy. Its easy really. Find one product that you can make at a reasonable price and sell for a profit and you will do well at market. You only need one product. I know a guy who makes home roasted coffee. That is ALL he does. Sure its a process, its not easy and he does it extremely well. The important thing here is he found the one thing that he wanted to take to market that could make him a profit.
How much profit? Well that’s a great question isn’t it? I firmly believe in the old saying that you should charge what the market will bear. I also recently heard another expression that the important thing is the “perceived value” something that is large, well presented and “appears” to be good value will have a higher “perceived value” than another item.
Ask your friends, neighbors and relatives what a good price for something might be? Maybe give them a choice of 3 or 4 prices. Ask something like “What would you feel was a fair price to pay for this widget?” If you are really unsure of your pricing then ask a dozen different people. Point out the plus of buying your homemade or home grown as opposed to store bought. Why is it worth that extra dollar or two for home made? Ask for comments regarding your presentation. What do they see as the positive points? Write this all down. One of your friends might give you the “killer sales pitch”. Visit other markets and see what price others that make similar products are selling them for.
Value your time. Your time is worth MONEY. Another friend once told me:
“I don’t have to go to work to go broke, I can stay at home and do that!” in other words if you are working, making a product and taking it to market then you need to be making a profit or you might as well just stay at home!
Here are some tips for 5 popular baked goods that will sell at market. If it sells it makes the hard work worthwhile. Right?
Farmers’ Market baking is a lot of work, but a great return if you have a great product.
1. Home Made Bread
Bread is a great seller at the farmers markets that I have attended. People love home made bread and hate to make it. They either hate to make it or don’t have time in their busy lives.
Basically the two types of bread that are most popluar are yeast bread and sour dough bread.
I make yeast bread. I make the best looking and tasting bread that I possibly can. I package them in plastic bags with a great looking label that lists ingredients and contact details.
My recipes are available for free on my email list. I will give you all of my popular baked goods recipes for free, just fill in the form in the right column and you will get one email per week with one of my great recipes from the Farmers’ market. But if you can’t wait and you want my recipes NOW then you can buy my eBook Baked From Scratch which is available at Barnes and Noble and also iBooks.
Here is a recipe to get you started.
(You know that serated one that comes in you knife set. )
Honey Oat Bread
Serving Size:
1 lb Loaf
Time:
3 hours
Difficulty:
not hard!
Ingredients
9 ounces Water, 80-90F
1/4 Cup Old Fashioned Oats
1 teaspoons Brown Sugar
1 1/2 Cups Whole Wheat Flour
1 1/4 Cups White Flour (Note a little less white flour as we have added Oats.)
1 ½ teaspoons Salt
2 tablespoons Butter
2 teaspoons Active Dry Yeast
Directions
Combine lukewarm water, sugar and yeast. Allow to sit for 10 minutes
Add all other ingredients to water/yeast and mix with dough hook for 7 minutes.
Allow to rise for 45 minutes or until double in size.
Remove dough from mixing bowl and beat down. Allow the dough to rest for 10 minutes.
Knead for a couple of minutes and shape
Roll in a plate of water and then roll in some grain to coat the crust.
Place in loaf pan and allow to rise until double in size or to top of loaf
pan. To prevent from drying out Spray with water while rising.
Bake in oven for 30 minutes at 375F
Remove from oven and pan and allow to cool on a rack for at least 15 minutes before slicing with a bread knife. (You know that serated one that comes in your knife set. )
What is popular at your Farmers Market may not be at mine. The secret to finding out is to be flexible and experiment. Here is my Part 2 in the blog about how to find the 5 Popular Baked Goods to take to the Farmers’ Market.
We started out making cookies for the Natchitoches Cane River Green Market quite a few years back. It was then that we discovered how popular our cookies became and how much demand there was for them.
I found that often the best sellers were the unique cookies. The cookies that the customer could NOT buy anywhere else locally. I made cookies that tested peoples taste buds to the extreme.
Samples sell cookies at Farmers’ Markets. I would usually sample out a bag or 2 of my more unique cookies. People need to taste them before they will buy something that is so “different”. Its also a great conversation starter. Samples sell. The other thing that I found is that I would give away a sample of cookies and perhaps sell some cookies, but it would also get the customer to look at my other goods. Repeat after me! Samples Sell!
Chocolate Chip Farmers’ Market Cookies
Of course no self respecting cookie maker in the U.S.A. can go to market without a good choc chip cookie. We hunted high and low and finally found the recipe that best represented us. We did make a few changes to it. An extra egg, changed the choc chips, etc Give it a try. We took these to the Farmers’ Market for years and sold them all most weeks. Watching the Food Network is always a source of pleasure for our family. Wow they have some great ideas. Now we love our spicy food, whether it be Mexican or Indian or even Chinese, we like a bit of heat. There was this show talking about spicy cookies. WOW…… take a look at what we came up with. Join our email list in the form on the right and I will give you the recipe. Necessity is the mother of invention. Sometimes a mistake or other “kitchen katastrophe” will lead to something new. Read the recipe of our Choc Mint Deluxe For more about this! Its funny and an eye opener in lots of ways.
But here is a recipe to get you started. Its the Farmers Market Choc Chip Recipe.
Sell home made cookies at the farmers market
Farmers’ Market CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES This is my basic chocolate chip cookie dough.
Method: 1. Heat oven to 375 F. 2. In a large bowl, beat butter, sugars, vanilla, and eggs on medium speed or with spoon until light and fluffy. 3. Stir in flour, baking soda and salt. Dough will be stiff. Stir in chocolate chips. 4. On ungreased cookie sheet, drop dough by tablespoonsful, or small ice cream scoop, 2 inches apart. 5. Flatten slightly. 6. Bake 12 minutes or until light brown. Cool 1 to 2 minutes, then remove from baking sheet to cooling rack. Makes about 6 dozen cookies.
I bagged them in sandwich bags. 6 to a bag. I also bought some nice white bags with little windows. 12 to bag.
Have fun and make profit by selling lots of bags of Farmers’ Market Cookies.
ANZAC Biscuits (Cookies) at the Farmers Market
A recipe for ANZAC biscuits was found by a friend of my wife Amy. When she emailed it to us we looked it over and soon realized that some of the ingredients were going to be difficult to come by or at best very expensive. Time to substitute! ( By the way, a biscuit in Australia is a cookie)
Check that out its in my Free Recipe email list. Its the secret recipe that I have been asked for the most in all of my baking for the markets. Join up at the right and one of my secret recipes for the Farmers’ Market will be yours each week.
