[Wi-sunflower]

Yes, you can't legally "fix prices".

At the market I go to tho, if you don't stay in a "ballpark" price range often people think something is "wrong" with the stuff.

One week when I was fairly new (only a couple of years) I had a whole LOT of nice lettuce come on all at once. Bostons and other leaf types. Because I had so much I wanted to move, I went below the prevailing price (at that time) of 60 - 75 cents / and priced mine at 3/$1. I barely sold any for the first 3 hours. Then someone clued me in and I changed the price to 2/$1 and it started selling rather well.

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As far as the booth fees go, we can see that they are all over the place and don't always relate to how well established or popular the market is.

Something I MUST add --

There are now SO MANY markets that many of the older established markets here aren't doing nearly as well as they used to. When I started at the Capitol market in 88, there was only 1 other market in the Madison area. Now there are 20 or more. So if a person doesn't want to go downtown, they don't have to any more. BUT, I used to sell over $1,000 / Sat many times each year. Often every Sat in Sept and Oct. This year we never got close and many weeks weren't even 1/2 of that. The customers are too split up now.

In Wisconsin just about every little town wants to have a market. You could do 20 on a Saturday if you had the people and equipment to run them. And there are lots of little weekday "going home " time markets (4-7PM). But most of them only draw a handful of farmers and many of them are really only back yard growers with some excess. There aren't enough REAL farmers to go around and some markets also have plenty of vendors that don't even grow what they sell. (1 of my big pet peeves )

I do a decent Wed market in Madison. There is also a Wed "going home" market in Horicon, a town I drive thru on my way. One day Mom and I stopped on the way home to see if it would be worth it to "double up" as the timing would work out. We just stopped and walked around to look. It was bigger than most with about 20 vendors. BUT all of them looked like they were just backyard growers except for 1 guy that had a pick-up load of sweet corn. We actually had more left over in our truck than just about that whole market had and we had had a decent selling day already. I knew they wouldn't WANT us there so we never even asked.

Ray used to try a couple of the little weekday markets near us, but when you sit 5+ hours and only sell $20 or so, you don't go back. Lately he has done better selling cabbage to a couple local restaurants and a local Piggly Wiggly grocery.

Just some observations from a 30 year market vendor,
Carol