First week at local market

hoggie · #1 04/21/13, 09:37 AM

We did our first outing at our local street market yesterday. It is very small scale - only half a dozen sellers - but we went along with eggs and egg products (lemon curd, meringues, custard tarts and would have had lemon meringue pies but the curd part of them failed to set

) and also took some goat milk to sell. Didn't take too much of anything as it was our first time and I think people take a while to get used to seeing you there.

We sold everything we took with us and turned a small profit. I'm happy with that for a first outing - now just need to build on it for next week. Went today and bought more ingredients ready to bake during the week.

Anyone got any hints or tips? Halfway through the morning we moved our table forward - it started out towards the back of the gazebo, so we shuffled it forward so it was nearer to people walking past. We laid our produce out on brightly coloured fat quarters of fabric. Already selling as "using all local ingredients where available".

Any thoughts for other products we could add to our stall? There are already two people doing bread, and one doing cakes, and some fresh veg etc.

SFM in KY · #2 04/21/13, 08:20 PM

Not sure where you are but this time of year in lots of places, I see a lot of seedlings for sale, both vegetables and flowers. Obviously, you won't have your own, but you may be able to find a small local nursery and buy enough to count as a 'bulk' purchase and put the 3 to half a dozen plant prices up enough to make a profit. May depend on if there are quite a few nurseries locally available for people or not.

MJDC · #3 04/23/13, 05:31 AM

-gougeres-yum or cream puffs. (you asked when I was already craving them, and they do take a lot of eggs. . .

hoggie · #4 04/24/13, 03:27 PM

SFM - thank you - I have a feeling that someone might already do seedlings - although I didn't see anyone there last week. Will check it out this week.

MJDC - those gougeres look good - I hadn't heard of them before, but those and the choux buns look like a great idea (I love choux pastry

)

summerdaze · #5 05/04/13, 08:30 AM

What about doing granola? It's fairly inexpensive to make, has several uses, (cereal, ice cream topping, etc) and everyone seems to like it. Of course, the more dried fruits, nuts, etc you put in it, the more the cost goes up. I have a recipe for peanut butter granola that my friends LOVE! Granola is pretty quick to make, you can put it in large baggies, so it's easy to tote too.

meanwhile · #6 05/05/13, 11:41 AM

We went to our very first market on Friday and made $34.00! Not much, but we were excited. My son made herb mixes. What we noticed is that people bought ALL of the herb mix that we set out to sample. It was an Italian herb mix with peppers and we mixed it with olive oil and had bread to dip in it. People bought every pack of that mix.

We had other mixes and a few were bought but only AFTER we sold all the others. I know we cannot set out samples of everything but, the samples really helped.

Also, we noticed our booth looked small and skimpy. Photos are on our FB page. You can see them at the link below. But, next week we are going to take a longer table and some flowers to brighten up the booth.

Another thing was we ran out of quarters! We had to cut our prices to make up for the fact we had no change! That was stupid on our part. Next week we plan to have enough quarters and other change and a proper cash box. We only had a tote bag.

We noticed that most people were not buying things they had to cook or do anything else with. They were buying up things that were just "take and eat" or quick and easy things like our herb mix that all they had to do was add oil.

Good luck and congrats on your first market!