Quitting day job to run grocery supplied by my farm

Why not have "the store" at the property you farm? That way you could start out smaller, pay no rent, and offer the upscale customers something really special for their time and effort getting to your store. When you pay rent to somebody else, they become your boss, replacing the one you just quit working for.

Another store in another small town just doesn't offer the uniqueness you will need, from the first day you open the doors, to make an equivalent amount to what you are making............

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I'd suggest that you read Sarah Aubrey's "Starting and Running Your Own Small Farm Business."

She has included lots of "nuts and bolts" topics and helps, like business plans and market research and asset protection.

ISBN 978-1-58017-697-2

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I would love to but I live so far out that marketing would be a huge obstacle. The location of the store I have in mind is the first building on main street as you enter the town. Main street sees a lot of traffic and the curb appeal I think would be a huge benefit.

Another thing I have working in my favor is there are no grocery stores in the town at all. Everyone has to drive several miles to get to a walmart or dollar store but there is next to zero fresh produce available for a good ways. I have no competition for miles. There are also several restaurants on the street as well.

I would switch to 1/2 time or consulting with my employer before I'd give up a steady paycheck. If you're good, they might go for it.

I've never owned a grocery store, but I think that $50K a year is extremely over optimistic.

Rent, liability insurance, property insurance, electric, gas, water, and hourly employees are going to be expensive. When you write your business plan, take these totals, and divide that by the number of hours you will be open for the month. That will give you an amount that you need to sell every hour just to break even.

My guess is that it will take a minimum of 2 employees, plus yourself, to run the store alone.

It's a great idea, but remember who your market is. Half, or more, of the population of that town is going to be upset if you don't sell cigarettes, Mountain Dew, and fountain drinks. Another percentage is going to drive 80 miles to the nearest store because your organic fresh eggs are $2.79 a dozen and the huge corporate grocery store has eggs for $1.59 on sale. While there is a good movement to organic/homegrown/non GMO foods, it really still is a smaller percentage of the population, the way I see it. Think about this for a while.

My suggestion is that you need to set up a road side stand, and run it for a couple of years, figure out if you like it and can turn a profit, and then move to a store if you really think it can fly.

Just because you can rent a building, and start a store, doesn't mean that the customers will flock to you.

Expecting 50K in a small town grocery? Wow in no way can you compete with the buying power of the bigger stores. And how far away are those bigger ones? People will drive many miles to Save a buck. Even if that means 20 30 miles one way to save at a much larger and way more selection then a small town grocery store can even to begin having. The profit margin is very small in ANY grocery store so you have to sell a huge amount in volume just to cover overhead. And being small you buy at a much higher price for those items then the bigger ones do. So even making 3% to 5% margin means a price a lot higher then how close is the nearest good sized town or city?
My friends are in the vending business they have around 850K a year in sales. THEY can't even buy cases of soda as cheap as the stores can. So that means if I want to buy a case of soda I can buy it cheaper from the "store" then i can from my friends company.~! Think about it.

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CO OP Lot of nay sayers in what ever anyone wants to do. Yes do you research but do not lose sight of your dream. Retail grocery may not be it. There is a farm stand grocery I visited in Carbondale, Ill. They are in a small shopping center and are just two shops down from the food co op. They do well enough to keep the door open. Take all the advise you get. Keep your eyes open and onward thru the fog.

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I'd look into starting a CSA. If you have a customer base 30 miles away once a week deliveries to them is much more feasible than getting them to drive to you. You can grow your business as time and finances allow without making a large investment of your own funds. (Unless the storefront already has coolers, displays, etc, this will all cost you startup money). This also allows you to spread some of the financial risk to others and allow them to fund your expansion. Good luck with whatever you do.

Meat! You need to Check into what it Takes to sell your raised meat to the Public. If you have no idea, just this will "Shock" you. If you raise your own meat and pay a processor to cut and package it for you and get All the inspections done then put it into your store---why would you think a customer will pay you $5 to $15 a pound for some of your meat that they can buy for $1.89 to $6.99 at the Big Grocery Store. "WE" can not compete with a Big Beef Operation that sells 10,000,000lbs or more yearly when we only raise 5,000lb a year. It takes alot of acreage to raise enough animals to give you a steady supply of meat to sell in your store. Of course if you try to get 2/3 times the normal price---it would not take alot because it would not sell.

Competition----why will I drive by a man sitting beside the road with a truck load of vegetables that are selling for 1/2 of what yours are selling for? He does not have to pay rent and overhead so he can sell cheaper. Competition will not sit back and watch you profit $50k per year-----If you were making that kind of money---I would open a location on each side of you to try to get most of that $50k for myself.

I personally feel if you are working by yourself and planted 5 acre's of produce and kept it planted, picked, hoed, etc. Feed and took care of all the meat animals-----you will not have enough time to even hardly visit your store during alot of days. On top of that--If you try to farm and raise enough food to raise alot of animals----your wife probably would not get to see you but rarely. You would have to lease more land because you can only do so much on a few acre's.


Someone already mentioned What you going to sell in the winter---You still got rent/bills to pay? If you have to buy most of the produce and other things you sell and pay rent and all the other bills------I would wish you Luck!

Keep the job and the insurance and stair step your way to what you want. Forget leasing the storefront--big risk and too much of what you earn would go to someone else. Cut out the middle man.

It will be hard to do with a ft job, but lots of farmers now do just that! Keep your job but start selling at the local farmers market that the rich folks go to . Make cutesy signs and create a website with beautiful pictures your wife takes. Eventually, have regular hours at your farm where people can pick up their CSA or whatever they want to buy.

We have someone on this board who does this in AL. This would be very low cost upfront. If you can survive selling at the farmer's market, you can see how to expand and maybe if the storefront idea could work. But not from this advantage point at this particular point in time.

Consider a seasonal local grown farm stand. If it catches on you could begin working on an all-year basis.

It wouldn't burn out your family so much, especially the ones donating their labor of love to your cause. Personally, I would never ask anyone to work for free, especially family. It leads to hard feelings and their labor is worth every bit as much if not more than the high school kid you hire. Barter or trade, maybe. Never free.

Don't quit your job for that until you've tried the idea for size. If your wife is on board 100 percent it's worth trying. If not, the idea may not be for now.

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I think it also depends on your area. 10 years ago we moved from an area where the local food movement was strong, CSA's everywhere, real farmer's markets. There were a few local farm stands/co-op type stores that started before the movement that are now very profitable. But when we moved to Southern Oregon none of this was happening here. It's just catching on in the last 2 years and more viable here, but competition is already hurting people because the consumer's are still not quite there yet. If you get in early you have the best chance for success, but may take a while.

I think a lot of the regulation for the kind of thing you want to do may be prohibitive. If you are selling meats, you'd need to be licensed and regularly inspected as a meat handler. If there's any dairy there, that will open up a whole new can or worms. Home canned goods could be procured from someone who has a commercial kitchen, and (here in Ohio anyway) jams and jellies can be considered a cottage industry as are baked goods. Anything other than jams/jellies/baked goods, needs a commercial kitchen that is licensed and inspected to meet state requirements for a food processing plant. You need to look into GA's laws about it all. Don't forget there will be the liability insurance costs in case someone gets hurt on the premises or makes a claim for sickness from food purchased from you. There's a lot to think about.

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Just my own 2 cents..

If you're in a rural area, it's likely that consumers have their own gardens and green houses and are only heading off to wal-mart, et al for flour, meats, spices, paper goods, etc. so why would they have a need for a local store selling what
they already have? ( which may be the very reason there isn't a grocer in the town).

For that reason, and others already mentioned, I'd have a business plan which included a reasonable feasibility market study..is there consumer demand for such a store??

Where in GA are you? I didn't have time for a garden this year, and I don't have room for meat animals. If you're local, you may already have a customer. I'm in Woodstock.

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Please don't have your folks work for you for free. Babysit a couple of hours on Saturday is a grandparent's joy. You are an adult, you pay your parents if they work for you.

People will drive 30 miles for something they want. If you have something nobody else has, and I don't mean organic carrots, they will come. If you can contract with locals to grow pastured meat, for instance, I would drive 30 miles. In selling to the public you have to have an inspector in the slaughterhouse, but that wouldn't be your problem it would be between the farmer and the butcher.

You don't have to sell everything that a big store sells, you just have to have the finest produce and have something the big stores don't sell. Seasonally, you can sell fruit by the bushel, as well as canning supplies.

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If you were already growing and selling large quantities of produce and meats from your farm, I'd be a lot more likely to see the possibility of this idea working. But you need to sell enough to cover your take-home pay plus all the tax and benefit contributions made by your employer, PLUS the expense of farming, and the overhead of the business. If you were already a proven success at growing and marketing the spectrum of produce and meats that you propose, then the step to a storefront would probably be worth thinking about. But if you're hoping to take home, say, $30,000 then you need to be aiming at gross sales in the vicinity of $150,000, and be ready for the whole family to work at farming, marketing, promoting and bookkeeping all day, every day.

I have found that selling vegetables is just generally a poor market unless you live in an area that has a lot of greenies, foodies, and liberals. In other words, a big urban area.

Speaking specifically of my region (central Texas),old rural folks (and there are very few young rural folks anywhere) go to Walmart to buy their food with their pensions and social security checks. Organic food is for filthy hippies ... they'll buy medical marijuana before they'll buy organic lettuce. Rural America is primarily 70 years old and broke. Anyone out there who wants to eat good food is producing their own ... they're not going to buy yours.

The best way to get some money out of your garden is to take all of the excess produce you can get and dump it into a pig pen with a few squealers in there. People do like farm raised pork and they'll pay a pretty good penny for it, plus you can set up subscriptions and deliver your packaged meat to folks in big urban environments where they don't get that sort of thing much.

I don't know how to tell you this ... but there isn't much money in rural America unless you're growing corn for Monsanto. If there was money in rural America, then the government wouldn't be trying to destroy it.

First off, figure out what you *need* to live on for a year and put it in the bank or whatever form of savings you're comfortable with. Add on top of that what you'd need to cover medical costs, automotive breakdown costs, and another 10% for unknowns.

You don't mention if you've ever gardened or farmed or handled animals/meat before. If you haven't, start with a home garden now, and maybe some chickens.
Survey the area, see how many people are currently gardening, raising their own chickens/pigs/cows. Check LocalHarvest.org to see how many competitors you have - I used to live in GA (Decatur/Atlanta and Woodstock). There is quite a good market in some areas. There are also some long-term CSA's that turn people away each year or have a waiting list. This is called a market survey.
Starting with a CSA with your wife's photo skills and an inexpensive website, is definitely the safest way to begin if you find you actually enjoy gardening and animals or already know that you do and have experience while you are both still working and have insurance and such. Being in IT, you also have all kinds of contractor options available to fill the off season months if you need to. Get creative!

Dreams are wonderful, and it sounds like you are young Don't let hard work scare you away, but do treat it the same way you would if applying for a job or buying a house. Think through all of the possibilities and be prepared. You've received a ton of good, experienced advice here from all of the other posters. Consider it well. Then go out and make it happen, but with forethought and realistic expectations.

Best wishes!

~ST

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