Author Topic: Selling at farmer's markets  (Read 3763 times)

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omnimirage

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Selling at farmer's markets
« on: December 27, 2017, 12:38:54 am »
There's lots involved with being successful selling honey at markets. Some things I've picked up on is to be friendly and polite towards other vendors, smile and talk positively to people, express my passion for bees and honey, not to sit down to stand and make myself look busy, to have my stand either have lots of products, or a few, not a moderate amount, offer samples.

One thing that I've noticed is, many customers seem to assume that I'm not a beekeeper, and become pleasantly surprised when they discover that I am indeed, a beekeeper. Being able to visually communicate such is then profitable. Customers are first exposed to the visuals of ones stand before any other stimuli, so that visual look is crucial for one's first impression.

I've created myself a "local honey" sign with some pictures of my bees to help visually communicate such. I've read other people taking their smokers, to act as something to attract visual interest, though I'm not sure how people would respond to it. I've read some people attending in their beesuits, but I figure as a young person I'd look really rather out of place doing such. I've also heard of some people taking observation hives, but I'm concerned for the welfare of the bees and doing that, and concerned I'll give sensitive people a fright with such.

One thing that I'm really unsure how to approach, is selling honeycomb. Honeycomb seems to attract a lot of interest, I figure people it's a rare sight for many. Many people seem to become quite put off by the price of it. Now, I've been selling honeycomb all at the same price, even though some honeycombs weigh a lot more, or a lot less than others. It's gotten to the point, where I'm hiding the very small, and very large honeycombs from customers. Last market I went to, I divided my honeycombs into two sections; the ones on the left had a going price of $10, the ones on the right had a selling price of $12. Most people bought the $12 and I felt the person who bought the $10 wouldn't have done so if it was $2 more. I'm wondering if I should have a third pile, or maybe individually price each comb with a marker on them. I see that the ones I sell, look a lot more raw and natural and there's more comb and they're sold at less, or an equal price to more professionally packaged combs, that to me look weird with how "perfect" they are.

Does anyone have any tips to be more successful selling at markets?

Offline LazyBkpr

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #1 on: December 27, 2017, 04:13:59 pm »

   I asked the wife if I could hire the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders to help me sell honey.......    Didn't work for me, she said no, but, I am BETTING you would sell a LOT of honey!   :laugh:
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Offline CBT

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #2 on: December 28, 2017, 11:09:25 am »
Honey is mostly sold by weight. A small scale is cheap and everyone’s paying the same that way. Just saying

Offline Bakersdozen

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #3 on: December 29, 2017, 11:02:56 pm »
A cardboard template would be an easy way to ensure they all appear the same dimensions.  CBT is right about the scale. 
Remember:  Burt of Burt's Bees started out selling honey by the roadside in 1 gallon jugs.

Offline apisbees

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #4 on: December 30, 2017, 12:52:04 am »
A cardboard template would be an easy way to ensure they all appear the same dimensions.  CBT is right about the scale. 
Remember:  Burt of Burt's Bees started out selling honey by the roadside in 1 gallon jugs.
Remember Burt didn't own Burt's Bees It was a lady with great marketing skills and sold all of Burt's Honey for him as well as developing and marketing any other hive products she could think of. So if it was left up to Burt He would have still been selling his honey on the side of the road in 1 gallon Jugs.
So look for advice in marketing, as you are doing with this thread. In the end you need to figure out what works in your market. People will question where the product comes from and that is a good thing. it is not that they do not believe you but that they want assurances that they are getting real pure natural honey, not something that some middle man is buying wholesale and marketing as his own product.
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omnimirage

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #5 on: January 02, 2018, 07:35:02 pm »
I ended up using a scale as suggested and charged each honeycomb it's own price.

Lots of people are interested in bees I've noticed. Often times, if I can get them involved in some sort of conversation, it's common for people to have questions, I end up getting at sale out of them more often than not. I can understand why people would want that assurance! I feel as if there's some skeptism regarding the quality of honey products, since supermarket ones often tend to be bland and lacking.

Offline Bakersdozen

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #6 on: January 03, 2018, 07:09:46 am »
I ended up using a scale as suggested and charged each honeycomb it's own price.

That's good.  You don't want a repeat customer to come back and get confused over pricing or feel that they have overpaid on a previous visit.  Building customer trust is crucial.

omnimirage

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #7 on: January 04, 2018, 04:17:47 pm »
That's true. It also just felt a lot better to me being able to offer small combs for cheaper, and large juicy combs for more.

Offline Barbarian

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #8 on: January 05, 2018, 12:48:11 am »
When I sold cut comb, I used a rectangular metal cutter to cut the pieces of comb from an unwired frame. The odd bits of comb can be kept as "tasters" or crushed and strained.
I found it helped to have the super frames set slightly wider apart ..... 9 in a Langstroth. I alternated the foundation. One frame full size and the next half down from the top bar.
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Offline Bakersdozen

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #9 on: January 05, 2018, 05:44:56 am »
https://worldwidebeekeeping.com/forum/index.php?topic=493.0
This is a link to riverbee's posting regarding comb honey.  She's given detailed information on how to produce comb honey with minimal cost.  This might help, omni.

omnimirage

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #10 on: February 25, 2018, 05:54:46 am »
I've been learning more by selling at markets. People at farmer's markets tend to favour buying larger quantity items, they like to buy a full kilo of honey whereas people at more community events, like fundraisers (church fetes) or festival type events, tend to buy the smaller, less cost effective honey jar. I believe the former are about to celebrate, they like to contribute and might fancy the notion of a small jar of honey to use here and there. People at farmer's markets are there to consume, they are more serious customers that want less to support and more to simply get high quality cheap produce to consume.

Since Australia is quite a multicultural country, and that many ethnic people value good quality produce, I often barter with a large type of audience. I've noticed that, Asian brown people (sort of India area) are more inclined to haggling, many other Asian demographics take stronger consideration of the price of goods and are more insistent at buying at the lowest standard honey will go for.These types seem to almost culturally value competitively standard cheap priced produce, whereas the brown Asians tend to be more inclined towards haggling to undercutting degrees.I was wondering whether honey is simpler more popular amongst caucasian and Asian demographics, but it seems like that's not the case, seems like honey is quite popular amongst a variety of ethnicities and it just seems like there's more caucasian and Asian interest due to them being the highest population demographics present.

The haggling is something that I'm not good at. I experimented with adding some honeycomb to some jars, and early on in the day someone ended up buying all 9 of my experiment, he haggled me down to a price though that I regretted afterwards. I need to work out beforehand what's the lowest price I'm prepared to sell x at y quantity, which I'm not that sure how to do.

Something that I'm unsure about is allowing myself to drop in price. I sell my honey at a price slightly higher than the lowest standard price, I figure because my honey is better quality than most and many people are willing to pay that. Whenever people ask to pay the lowest minimal standard amount for honey, I've just been agreeing, because I want the sale. One of the problems is, people will come to expect that lower price in the future. A stronger move in general is, let's say you're selling honey at $11 a kilo, and someone wants it for $10, to then offer them two kilos of honey for $20. That is, to offer them the discount that they desire, but at a greater quantity. If someone wants them for $9 for a kilo tub, I can tell them I can sell them 4 for $36. This plays into their desire to haggle, it doesn't just blow them out or shut out the bartering exchange, it doesn't reveal weakness or allow oneself to develop the reputation of just agreeing to dropping the price if asked, it instead offers them the discount price, at a condition that oneself is happy with; a greater quantity of sale. One thing I'm unsure about, is when if I should ever agree to lowering my price, or just insist on selling it to them for a lower price at a greater quantity only. Some people have haggling bartering styles but some are just straight forward, seemingly open and honest and are direct about wanting to buy it a cheap competitive price. I'm not sure if they ask to pay $10 instead of $11 for one kilo, then I offer them two kilos for $20, then they express that they just want 1 kilo and offer me $10.50 for it, whether I should accept that offer, or decline.

A lot of people have been asking me "do you add sugar"? I'm not entirely sure what people mean they ask this and I'm under the impression that different people are asking different questions when saying this, and one needs to try and best gauge what they're asking this and what information do they want to hear. Some believe adding sugar to beehives is unethical, some believe it creates a poor quality honey flavour and healthwise. Some seem to believe that people stir in sugar into honey to make it sweetener, that people dilute honey with sugar and possibly other stuff. Some seem to be uninformed diabetic or other health people. Either way I struggle to navigate these interactions well and figure I need an effective way in communicating with these types and relay the information they want to hear. I even had one person point to the crystals in my sample jar and ask me if there's no sugar added, then what's those crystals then, and apparently wasn't convinced when I told them about honey crystals and walked off.

I had a weird interaction where one person asked if my honeycomb was real, he then told me that some people are manufacturing fake honeycomb that looks real and attempt to sell them as the real deal. I did my best to convey that was not the case by talking about my practices and bees and well frankly I was surprised that he even thought that because I hadn't heard of that before, he asked if he could try a piece to be sure and I said sure, he took off the smallest bit and tried it, looked unsure and he eventually said that he couldn't tell so, unconvinced, he wandered off.

I'm coming to learn that, people are quite suspicious about honey products. They often know that there's a difference in quality with honey, they might have some ideas as to why that might be the case, they might not, but my products will be under scrutiny; people want to be reassured that, what they're buying is a pure, raw quality product and my ability to believably communicate such to people is directly related to how much I can sell.

I've had people ask me for beepollen. I haven't looked into that but apparently it's sweet, popular in certain regions in the world and with health people. There seems to be a decent demand for beeswax also, and I can't really tell but people seem to be willing to pay more for wax than they do for honey.

Offline Bakersdozen

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #11 on: February 25, 2018, 09:05:56 am »
Omni, I don't do farmer's markets and never have.  That being said, over the years there have been numerous articles written, in the US beekeeping magazines, regarding selling bee related products.  I also have some friends that do farmer's markets and they tell me they have heard lots of crazy questions.  Sometimes they have to educate the public and squash misinformation.  It has been written that you should not lower your pricing because someone wants to haggle you down.  You have a quality product, you believe in your product, and you should price it accordingly. Instead of lowering the price perhaps you could offer to refill returned jars at an Aussie off or a percentage off?
We have strict food handling laws here and I'm sure you do there as well.  I would not open a jar for someone to take a nibble out of.  That jar can't be sold after that.  Have sample jars available, with disposable straws or pretzels or stir sticks will eliminate a lot of questions. Those jars are for sampling only.  Also, it's a good way to draw people to your booth.  Asking, "Would you like to taste a sample of honey?"  When they taste your product they will know it is a quality product.  Also, clean non-sticky jars are a must.  Generally speaking people in the US want to see honey that is not crystallized.  They won't buy it if it has started to crystallized.  I did have a Russian woman ask me about crystallized honey.  It seems that is popular in Russia. There are labels available that explain how crystallization is natural and how to reheat the honey to eliminate it. 
Your labeling could eliminate a few questions.  Using pure or natural is popular here.  You could list the ingredients: honey.  Always add your name, phone number, maybe email address, or mailing address, or facebook page.  People will want to contact you for more honey and you are proud of your product.
If people ask whether you feed sugar or not, tell the truth.  I tell people that I do, in an emergency situation, so they don't starve in winter.  Sometimes I go on to explain that it was a dry year and nectar sources were scarce, etc.  That shuts them up.  :D  A lot of times customers ask a question because it is something they heard on the news. They are just trying to sound informed.
Before expanding on to sideline products like bee pollen and beeswax educate yourself first and get honey sales down first.  If people ask, tell them thanks for the inquiry and that next year you hope to be able to provide that.  That's another opportunity to educate people about how much nectar it takes to produce beeswax. One ounce beeswax bars are popular here.  There is a mold that makes several at a time.  One ounce sells anywhere from $1 USD up, what ever the market will bear.
Be careful not to take on more than you can handle.  That's when you lose quality and quality is what you are selling.  The unknown sources on the supermarket shelf are questionable.  You are offering quality and a local product.  As for pricing, if there is any other beekeepers in the area selling, check out their prices and do the same. Don't base your prices on what is at the supermarket.

Before you know it you will be making and selling lotion bars, lip balms and soaps!

omnimirage

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #12 on: February 25, 2018, 04:00:52 pm »
I could offer to refill but they have to buy a jar to begin with first and well, I'm not set up yet to be able to do such.

It wasn't a jar, it was a takeaway container that had a bit of honeycomb in there. He cut a little piece off with a plastic spoon that I provide for the honey sampling jars. Should have I not offered this? Thinking on it, it was risky to just allow him to cut it off himself, if anything I should have taken the spoon and cut a little piece off for him.

At community markets, yes tasting it convinced them it was a quality product and they'd buy it, but not at these farmer's markets I go to. People ask me if it's raw, if it's poor, if it's been heat treated, if sugar has been used, I offer them a sample and then they still hound at me with these questions. Tasting alone is not enough to dispel these concerns and isn't sufficient for them to determine whether it's a quality, healthy product or not.

My sample jar had a little bit of crystals on the bottom of it. Some crystals got closer to the lid when people were scooping honey out with the plastic spoon, which made that one person more suspicious about whether I used sugar. I learned from that, I need to pay more attention to providing a quality liquefied sample jar.

I don't even have labels currently, I think I'd be more successful if I did.

I feel as if I need to get around to the beeswax because I have so many buckets of it that storage is becoming an issue, and now wax moth has gotten into a number of them. Point taken about focusing on getting the honey down though. I am pushing myself to my limits and because of so, I'm having less time to refine what I'm doing and the quality can suffer because of so. It's a constant learning experience.

There are maybe half a dozen other people selling honey at this market and it ranges from $10 a kilo (cheap standard low price) to $14. The people selling it at $10 seem to be either middlemen resellers, or amateurs that have poor looking quality containers to store them in, like rewashed jars and what not. I get my containers from a professional plastic/glass wholesale distributor and they look pretty swell.

Offline Bakersdozen

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #13 on: February 25, 2018, 06:38:08 pm »
.

 I should have taken the spoon and cut a little piece off for him.

At community markets, yes tasting it convinced them it was a quality product and they'd buy it, but not at these farmer's markets I go to. People ask me if it's raw, if it's poor, if it's been heat treated, if sugar has been used, I offer them a sample and then they still hound at me with these questions. Tasting alone is not enough to dispel these concerns and isn't sufficient for them to determine whether it's a quality, healthy product or not.



I don't even have labels currently, I think I'd be more successful if I did.

I feel as if I need to get around to the beeswax because I have so many buckets of it that storage is becoming an issue, and now wax moth has gotten into a number of them. Point taken about focusing on getting the honey down though. I am pushing myself to my limits and because of so, I'm having less time to refine what I'm doing and the quality can suffer because of so. It's a constant learning experience.

There are maybe half a dozen other people selling honey at this market and it ranges from $10 a kilo (cheap standard low price) to $14. The people selling it at $10 seem to be either middlemen resellers, or amateurs that have poor looking quality containers to store them in, like rewashed jars and what not. I get my containers from a professional plastic/glass wholesale distributor and they look pretty swell.

The beeswax project would probably make a great winter project.  Next year you can add it to your sales table.
It sounds like a wide range of honey products are being offered at the farmer's market.  I see why people are asking a lot of questions.  They are probably trying to figure out the best source.
As for all the questions...my Mom would have said something sarcastic about "the Great American public."  In your case I guess we could say something about those Aussies!

I would create a label asap.  I think it would help you move more product. It will look a little more polished too.

omnimirage

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #14 on: February 26, 2018, 03:27:33 pm »
Yeah there's usually half a dozen other people selling honey at this market so it's quite competitive. I think most people just want a product that they can have confidence in and believe it to be of quality.

Good to know about the label, I think it'll help a lot too. They'll look better, so I'll be able to throw another dollar onto how much I charge which will cover labelling costs and a little bit more (:

Offline riverbee

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #15 on: February 26, 2018, 08:09:40 pm »
omni, i don't do farmer's markets, i know jack and perry do. i really don't have the time but may consider it

i have a customer base, and just started doing craft fairs in the fall, and have a couple of places that sell my honey/candles typically in the fall months through christmas. soon lip balm. most of my sales are a combination of roadside, and customer based.

i don't haggle the price of anything. many don't get it and how hard we work and what our costs are, especially for us smaller beeks. we work too hard. the only time i give a discount is when a customer purchases a great deal from me. that's it.
i sell my honey at $10 a lb. and add 2.50 for labels/time, etc.............for specialty glass jars, more. 1 lb. muth jar for $16.50. labeled and shrink wrapped at the top of the cork.

i am not going to sell my honey to just move it. don't do that to yourself, and don't bargain. that's just my HO.

i have had customers walk away, and customers tell me i am not charging enough.
i do get questions, drives me crazy.  especially the 'raw' honey question. if ya want raw honey i won't filter what comes out of the extractor and you can enjoy the bee parts, wax particles, grass bits, and whatever else is in there......... :D

it's about PRESENTATION.........i don't sell any honey that is crystallized or with crystals in the bottom and everything has labels, like baker's said, 'more polished'.
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Offline Bakersdozen

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Re: Selling at farmer's markets
« Reply #16 on: February 27, 2018, 05:57:32 am »
Omni remember you are selling a food product.  Clean, neat, and with eye appeal will move your product.
I just glanced at the latest copy of Bee Culture magazine.  There is an article about proper labeling in the United States.  I will try to take a pic, if I get time later today, and post it here.  This is what is proper labeling in the US, no Australia.  You still need to call or research what applies in your part of the world.