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Old November 29, 2008   #17
carolyn137
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Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Upstate NY, zone 4b/5a
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Quote:
Originally Posted by cdevidal View Post
The post title also says, "selling to retail places," anyone have tips on that?
Yes, I put that in the title and said above that I'd speak to it sometime.

The comments that I would have made about selling to chefs has been pretty well covered before I could get back to post re same.

And in the title I was referring to my many year sale of fruits to a large farm stand where of course conventional tomatoes were being raised and sold at the same time.

In this case the variety selection was mine alone and I had to start out with varieties that were primarily red or pink b'c the customers were not aware of the other differently colored ones. I would throw in from time to time some yellows, bicolors, whites, oranges and blacks.

Variety selection was based on taste b'c they were being sold primarily for taste alone. But firmness of fruit or lack of it was also a consideration re shelf life.

And it was up to me to deliver when I could, so no pressures as occurred with the chefs, some of whom thought picking in the rain and mud was not their problem but wanted the fruits anyway.

Glorious was the day when one chef said he wanted only German Red Strawberrys for every delivery, along with his beloved red and yellow pears, and I told him I had only four GRS plants and couldn't guarantee they'd be in future deliveries. He got nasty so I cut him off cold. I wasn't doing this for money and didn't need to deal with anyone with an attitude.

So, back to the retail large Farmstand.

Fruits were picked and gently washed and dried, and each fruit was labelled with a round white sticker. They were placed one layer deep in a standard size nursery tray and weighed , the trays were, as previously tared, do determine the poundage delivered.

It was up to me to stop by from time to time and remove any fruits that had sprung leaks, or gotten too soft, etc., and I'd subtract that poundage from the initial poundage in a notebook that was kept.

That was for the larger single fruits. One of the best sellers were pints with different colored cherry tomatoes, some all of one variety, some with my color combos.

I could always demand more money for the heirloom varieties than for the local standard varieties, even when the price of the local ones got down to the price of the heirlooms.

I made up an information sheet with every possible variety I intended to deliver and didn't put anything other than the color/shape/size and the history known for it, where available, and it ran several pages, was stapled, and xeroxed and copies left in a pile to be taken free. They were very popular and also useful.

From time to time the owners would post when I'd be there personally to discuss tomatoes with customers and I thorougly enjoyed those times interacting with the public.

Well I remember getting a call at home from a lady planning a dinner party and she had in mind a color scheme for the tomatoes she wanted and I was able to help her out.

But I didn't encourage personal calls with personal private requests.

Because the fruits were great sellers it was decided that I'd also sell plants. That wasn't so successful b'c, I think, of the type of customers there who didn't want to spend time growing their own plants since they knew I'd be selling the fruits at the same stand.

labor intensive to individually wash and label every fruit? Sure, but the result in terms of customer interest to know exactly what variety they had was worth it. They'd stand around the display and ask each other if they had tried this one or that one and lively chat ensued.

All this was before my book was published in 1999 and it would have been helpful to have that there, but I also posted pictures of various varieties in the display area taken from magazine pictures.

All in all I look back now and can really say that I preferred selling fruits to the farm stand more than I ever did dealing with the various chefs.

When I moved to my new location here in 1999 I sold fruits to two local chefs but I had retired b'c of two bad hips ( see the thread in the General Discussion area) and it was getting harder and harder for me to do what I used to with the tomato growing.

I think it was the third year that I was here that someone told the Glens Falls Poststar about me and that ended up with a large article about me and my tomatoes and that ended up with all sorts of organizations asking me to do talks and taste testings.

I also worked with the Cornell Cooperative extension in my new county, just as I had with the five county Cornell Coop Ext where I previously lived. The role there was to hold seminars for farmers looking for a new niche market.

Being a former teacher/researcher I loved doing talks and taste testings b'c I like to talk and I think one of the most valuable experiences was talking to the Master Gardeners in this area, in a formal meeting sense, as I had where I moved from.

The level of knowledge re heirlooms for the Master Gardeners was quite low and yet they were the ones that manned the phones at the Coop Ext, so education was part of my mission in terms of making heirlooms known more to the public.
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