"In Market" - Getting Ready for the Farmers' Market Season

by Brian Moyer, Program Assistant, Lehigh Co.

In my great-grandfather's diary of his farming activities, you will find entries for most Saturdays that say "in market."  One can imagine what it took in the late 1800's to get ready to be "in market."  It might be a bit easier to get to market today, but anyone who sells at a four-hour once-a-week farmers' market can tell you, the preparation takes much longer.  Winter is usually the time for planning the growing season.  But, as we all know, growing it means we also need to sell it - so winter is also a good time for planning our market season.

According to the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), farmers' markets have grown by 3.6% from 2012 numbers of 7,864 to 8,144 in 2013.  Pennsylvania has seen a 30% growth in the number of farmers' markets across the state since 2010.  The opportunity this presents is that farmers basically have their pick of markets they want to participate in.  That also means that the customer also has their pick of what markets they wish to patronize.  Market patrons will want to buy from vendors who's products appear to be clean, high quality, clearly priced, and with attractive displays.  You can greatly increase your market day bottom line by taking some time to evaluate how you plan to sell your products at the farmers' market.

Here are some things customers (and market managers) will expect to see from you:

• Signage: Clean, colorful, and consistent signage is a must.  Customers do not want to have to ask you the price of your produce.  Customers are already making an effort to step outside of their shopping routine to come to the market and purchase something.  Don't make them work any harder than they have to.  Signs should have:
• Clear hand writing
• Price
• Name of the item
• What's special or different about it.  Is it an heirloom variety? Special flavor? Hot, mild, or sweet?
• A white board or chalk board is a nice and simple way to let folks know what is in season this week or what is on special

• Canopy: Have a good quality canopy and always use it, even on good weather days.  A clean canopy looks professional.  It is your "store."  It also helps keep your products clean and cool which will go a long way in maintaining the quality people expect to find at a farmers' market.
• Displays: Rule number one; no products on the ground! No one really wishes to purchase food that sat on the ground, even if it is in lugs or boxes. Set them on something.  The general rule is, displays should be between knee high and shoulder high.  Give some though to how you will draw customers into your booth space.  Once they are there, how do you want them to move through your booth?  Say you have a ten foot by twenty foot space and you are selling produce. Maybe you will want to locate your register at one end so they will have to pass by every item you have to offer.  You may want to place staple items like sweet corn, tomatoes, and potatoes at one end with more "impulse" purchase items closer to the checkout area.  One last item, make sure to keep your displays looking full as items sell throughout the market day.  If an item no longer fits in a bushel basket, make sure you have some smaller containers with you so you can transfer the remaining items to the smaller container to maintain that "full" appearance.
• Tell Your Story: One of the attractions at a farmers' market is you, the farmer.  More and more consumers want to know where their food is coming from and the people who grow it.  Some things to consider using to help you tell your story are:
• Framed poster board with photos of your farm
• A logo that is on all your signage and farm sign
• Brochures that tell your farm story
• Copies of any good articles that were written about your farm

Last, but not least, make sure you have all your permits that you many need to sell at market.  Depending on what items you are selling, you might be required to have a permit from the local, county, or state health department (Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture).  To find out what, if any, requirements you will need to follow, go to www.eatsafepa.com.  There you will find downloadable documents and requirements for selling at farmers' markets.

It is well worth taking time now to have all these items in place so you will be ready for your market when the season begins rather than trying to get all your market items and permits together one week before the market opens.  Waiting until the last minute may delay your ability to go to market if you have to wait for your permit.  Needless to say, you will also miss a lost of sales!

"Prepared for market" was usually the Friday entry in my great-grandfather's diary.  If you take the time and do your preparation, your "in market" experience can be even more rewarding.

When Business Plans "Take on a Life"

by Winifred McGee, Extension Educator, Dauphin Co.

At the Food for Profit workshop last week, I talked about researching and writing a business plan (as opposed to the "mental plan" for which many entrepreneurs settle).  After listening to me for a number of minutes, one of the participants asked: "How long should you plan? Couldn't trying to create "the perfect, complete plan" keep you from ever starting your business?"  What a good question!

Planning ahead is great -
but you need to get off the ladder to live!

Since my days as a Small Business Development Center consultant, I have believed that having written goals, objectives and strategies is essential for having a successful business.  However, writing the plan is just the tip of the iceberg.  If you want to have more than a "great novel," you have to progress from planning to action!  In Extension's food and farm business planning class, Your Future in Focus, we discuss 4 M's: Mapping, Move, Monitor and Modify.  The idea is, while having a plan is a great thing, it is not an end in itself.  The planning process includes a regular checkup of results, evaluation of the business' health, and revision where warranted.  Those other three M's are just as important as the initial mapping process to have a vibrant venture.

The SBA Blog Spot has a great article by Tim Berry, Founder and Chairman of Palo Alto Software and bplans.com that addresses this very subject.  Mr. Berry says that the assumptions in our plans can change very quickly in today's world, so we should see a business plan as a tool that we manage while running the business.  He suggests the following steps:

First, do a plan that has concrete specifics you can track.  Include not just the obvious numbers for sales, costs, and expenses, but also other manageable numbers like web traffic, visits, leads, presentations, calls, downloads, likes, mentions, updates, and whatever else drives your business.

Second, set a regular schedule for reviewing plan vs. actual results.  Have a monthly task to look at progress and identify problems.

Third, learn to distinguish problems of execution from changed assumptions.  If assumptions have changed, then the plan should change.... Usually, unexpectedly good results are a good reason to look at shifting resources towards the positive; unexpectedly bad results are a good reason to shift resources to correct a problem.

So, should you have a plan? Yes - absolutely.  Should business planning BE your venture? Not at all!  To do that would be similar to opening the promotional materials for a cruise, reading them, looking at the pictures and saying "Now I've been to the Bahamas!"  If we really wanted to see the Bahamas, we'd read the literature, talk to others who have visited there, contact a travel agent, and get a great wardrobe to wear on-ship as preliminaries - the point is to get on the boat!  And, having taken the trip, consider what you'd do differently in future trips.  In much the same way, business planning is not the end, but only a means, to a great (ad)venture.

What Retail Produce Marketing is About!

by John Berry, Extension Educator, Lehigh Co.

The incentive to consider retail marketing is obvious.  The closer you can get to retail customers, the more retail dollars go in your pocket.  However, it's not all profits.  If you sell retail, you will be providing services the wholesalers, packagers, distributors, and retailers typically provide.  As we approach another fresh produce marketing season, let's review some of the key details of operating a direct-to-consumer marketing enterprise.

Visual Display
Proper presentation of products increases sales.  Shoppers receive a positive impression if products are top quality, clean, and tastefully displayed.  Remember that high-quality products are the strength of produce markets!

A lively, well-stocked produce department entices the customer to buy and increases sales and profits.  Think of yourself as an artist, with several palettes of colors to choose from: visual - color, contrast, shape, size; smell - herbs, fruits; and touch - soft or firm.

Make displays that look like they came from the farm.  Wooden crates or boxes work well.  Baskets are beautiful; slant them toward the customer.  Even an attractive tablecloth can add to your sales.  Stair stepped displays create an array of depth, color, and texture; however, they may not be easy for the customer to reach or easy to restock.  Utilize vertical space by hanging products from slings or hangers.

Merchandising
"Pile it high and kiss it good-bye!"  Full, well-stocked displays make customers want to come back and get it.  Customers don't like taking the last of something from a bare, picked-over display; they want to choose the best.  Remember to not overstock to prevent the risk of crushing tender items on the bottom.

Make it easy for the customers to reach for the produce.  Your display should be no more than an arm's reach in depth, and between knee and waist level in height.  Don't put your merchandise on the ground.  Instead of placing your boxes flat, try slanting your produce to give the customer a more pleasing visual sense of your product.

Excellent example of using color and texture with a wide
product mix.  Everything I need to make a delicious side
dish for my dinner.

Organize products in related groupings.  Such groups might include dessert items, salad items, cooking vegetables, apples and pears.  Displaying compatible products together serves as a suggestion for additional purchases and uses of the products.

Research shows the use of color and texture greatly enhances eye appeal.  People enjoy food with their senses, so displays that are eye appealing tend to increase purchases.  Mix a row of radishes between the mustard and kale, tomatoes between the lettuce and cucumbers, or intersperse peaches with blueberries to create dazzling color displays.

Suggested good color groupings:

• Red and yellow or green
• Light green with yellow or purple
• Dark green with red, orange or yellow

If you don't have a lot of variety, create a color mixture with flowers or signs.

Price Signs

Prices should be clearly marked.  Most shoppers are in a hurry and will not search out the manager to find out how much something costs.  Include a few product features and perhaps menu suggestions on signs to stimulate your buyers' thoughts on how to use the item.

Great use of limited sign space to describe the product itself,
how to store at home, and possible uses.

Final Thoughts

Restock displays frequently, rotate products as needed, and remove damaged, decayed, or unsaleable products promptly.  Unsightly produce left on your stand not only detracts from sales, but it leaves the customer with the notion that you sell rotten produce.  If you'd buy it, leave it; if not, pull it out.

Celebrate National Ag Day!

by Michelle Kowalewski, Extension Educator, Susquehanna Co.

March 25th is National Ag Day, a time when producers, agricultural associations, corporations, universities, government agencies, and countless others across America gather to recognize and celebrate the abundance provided by American agriculture.

This year's theme for National Ag Day, sponsored by the Agriculture Council of America, is "365 sunrises and 7 billion mouths to feed."  American farmers are working harder than ever, and it shows!  Today, each American farmer feeds more than 144 people.  And, the need for food produced in the United States is dramatic.  Agriculture is the nation's #1 export and vitally important in sustaining a healthy economy.


As the world population soars, there is even greater demand for food, fiber, and renewable resources produced in the United States.

The National Ag Day program believes that every American should:

1. Understand how food, fiber, and renewable resource products are produced.
2. Value the essential role of agriculture in maintaining a strong economy.
3. Appreciate the role agriculture plays in providing safe, abundant, and affordable products.
4. Acknowledge and consider career opportunities in the agriculture, food, fiber, and renewable resource industries.

Ag Day is a good time to reflect - and be grateful for - American agriculture!  It's a teachable moment.  Consider holding your own Ag Day event, write a letter to the editor about the importance of agriculture, create a public service announcement, or even reach out to your local schools and educate youth about agriculture.  We are finding more and more that consumers want to know where their food comes from.  This event creates a great opportunity to open the door to consumers in educating them about the farmers that produce the food they eat.

2014 marks the 41st anniversary of Ag Day, so make it a tradition in your community and use it as a marketing and promotional tool for your agribusiness!

Do You Know Your Customers?

by John Berry, Extension Educator, Lehigh Co.

Do you know who your customers are today; who they will be ten years from now?  Successful marketers do.  Consumers are constantly changing, from their ages and attitudes, to their incomes and ethnic mix.  In order to successfully meet consumers' wants and needs, we must anticipate and respond to them before a demand for a product or service even exists.

Plan to Keep in Touch

Email lists are one method of staying in contact
with your customers on a timely basis.

One key advantage of direct marketing is contact with customers.  People seek the personal attention that is available from most farm retailers.  The benefit to the grower/marketer is first-hand knowledge of customer wants.  Make the most of this direct customer contact.  At the very least; ask your customers to record their name, address, and email in a notebook that is kept near the check-out.  Also consider collecting other electronic media contacts customers may be utilizing.  Once a notebook is started, you now have a mailing list.  This can help maximize promotional efforts.

Customers will develop a personal connection to your market if they are kept informed.  Is opening day next week?  Is there a huge crop of melons coming ripe?  Why not send an announcement to your regular customers?  Offer a discount on quantity purchases.  This type of effort is well received.  It helps you move product and it establishes loyalty in your customers.

Try to Keep Ahead
One way to prepare for tomorrow is to study changes in consumer demographics.  What do households look like?  What do consumers like to do with their free time?  Which consumers have the highest disposable income?  What would they be willing to spend it on?  How are these factors expected to change in the future?

Planning for the future is usually a guess.  To increase the confidence in this guess, try to base it on as much fact as possible.  The amount of information already gathered and analyzed is staggering.  The local library, township authorities, the department of transportation, and your Extension office can be possible sources of trend information.

Did You Know?
Here are general statistics from the Census Bureau.  Remember, these are for the entire population.  Try to answer some of these questions with the data that is specific to your customers.  By the year 2015, households without children under 18 will outnumber those with kids by 14 million.  The projections for the types of households we can expect are as follows: Couples without children, 32%; Women living alone, 17%; Men living alone, 14%.

How might this impact your customers and their shopping behavior?  The average person spends less than 50 minutes a day preparing meals.  Those with a microwave oven spend 45 minutes, while those without a microwave spend 59 minutes.  Clean up time averaged 7.7 minutes each day.

How do you fit your product into microwave preparation and easy clean up?

Conclusion
I like doing what I know how to do, and I find adapting to change is seldom comfortable.  However, exceeding the demands of most retail consumers is a moving target.  Effective direct marketers learn to change and adapt.  The efficiency of adapting can be increased by considering the possible developments of the future before they arrive.  In the final spare moments we may have before the spring season is upon us - let's spend some time and effort developing a deeper understanding of what drives our current shoppers and developing a better guess of who our future customers might be.

Manager - The Hardest Job!

by John Berry, Extension Educator, Lehigh Co.

I enjoy the comedy of Bill Cosby and remember his thoughts on being the boss.  His observation goes something like "I've seen the boss's job...and I don't want it!"  For many farm business managers, the tasks of effective management may not come with ease.  As we seek to more effectively utilize and grow our business skills, let's remember some of the differences between being a manager and not being a manager.

Good managers create, not consume, workplace energy.  Recall the four "classic" functions of management - Plan, Organize, Lead, and Control - that you learned in school?  Although these basic functions are fine for taking care of most of your day-to-day management duties, they fail to reflect the reality of many workplace situations, and discount the power of a valuable manager-worker partnership.

Today's manager needs an additional set of management functions that are based on forging a strong employee-employer relationship:

Energize.  Managers often need to be masters of making things happen.  You can be the best analyst in the world or the most highly organized executive on the planet, but if the level of excitement you generate can be likened more to a dish rag than to a spark plug, then you may never have what it takes to create a truly great environment.  Great managers create far more energy than they consume.  Instead of taking energy from the organization, the best managers channel and amplify energy to the organization.

Empower.  Great managers allow their employees to do great work typically by empowering them to excel.  This is a key management function because even the greatest manager in the world cannot succeed all by themselves.  To achieve organizational goals, managers depend on the skills that their employees are capable of delivering.  Effective management is the leveraging of the efforts of every member of a work group toward a common purpose.  If you are constantly doing your employees' work for them, not only have you lost the advantage of leverage that your employees can provide, but you are also putting yourself on the path to stress.

Support.  The key to creating a supportive environment is establishing openness throughout an organization.  In an open environment, employees can bring up questions and concerns - in fact, they are encouraged to do so.  When employees see their managers are open to new ideas, they are more likely to offer suggestions and new ideas.

Communicate.  Information is power, and as the speed of business continues to accelerate, information must be communicated to employees more and more rapidly.  Constant change and increasing turbulence in the business environment necessitate more and constant communication, not less.

Management is not what you do to people; it's what you do for them.  We often give short shrift to the social fulfillment components of work.  However, much research exists that shows employees value the soft aspects of their jobs just as much (and sometimes more) than economic rewards.  Managers who truly manage their employees - who energize them, empower them, support them, and communicate with them - will attract and retain key employees because of the trust and commitment they actively seek to build.

Is Customer Service on Social Media for You?

by Sarah Cornelisse, Sr. Extension Associate, Dept. of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education

I'm sure you've all seen them - the stories, comments, or other posts on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or another social platform from people dissatisfied with some aspect of a product or a service from a business. More so than ever, consumers are turning to social media to share their annoyances and horror stories.  However, they also turn to social media to connect with brands and businesses - to seek information,  ask questions, and resolve problems or concerns.

A 2012 Nielsen report provides some insight to consumer views regarding customer service via social media, or "social care."  Their findings include:

• Almost half (47%) of social media users engage in customer service activities through these networks. And of that 47%,
• Seventy percent (70%), do so on a monthly basis.
• Thirty percent (30%) prefer social care over contacting a company by phone.
• Facebook, through both the company's page and the user's personal page (29% and 28% respectively), are where users are most likely to comment or ask a question.

If your business has an existing presence on social media and is looking for a competitive edge, or just to improve your relationship with your followers, taking on social care may be something to consider.  However, it does require commitment.  Here are some tips I've come across for using social media as a customer service channel.

• Be proactive. Listen and participate in conversations. You can learn so much from simply listening to what your customers, or the public, are saying on social media.  If a conversation is happening and you can add to it, do so.  Through active listening, you'll be ahead of the curve in knowing what's important or of concern to them.

• Focus on social interaction as a competitive differentiator. One reason the buy local movement is popular is because consumers like to know the person(s) from whom they're buying.  You can bring the same focus on relationships to your online interactions with consumers.  When you're separated from individuals by a computer screen it's easy to put off replying until a more convenient time or to send short, clipped responses. However, by being personal and personable, you can build trusting relationships with your customers and followers that they will appreciate and value. 
  

  "When executing social media customer care, canned responses are unacceptable. Responses must be personal, and it’s essential to strike the right tone." (Source)

  Additionally, if consumers see inconsistency in your social care, they'll know that you're not committed to them.  A study by Conversocial, found that 88% of respondents said that they would be less likely to do business with someone who didn't answer questions on their social media pages.  This leads us to the next tip...
  
  
• Define a process and framework for dealing with customers. How, and when, will you respond to requests?  What's your strategy for dealing with complaints? Creating a response map (see example below) may be useful, as you'll want to have a consistent response strategy for everything that comes your way, even praise.   With some aspects of your response strategy, such as response time, it may make sense to make this known upfront to your customers with short notices on your social media page, or through an automatic reply.
  

  

  Source: http://www.conversocial.com

  When complaints are involved, be sure these points are addressed in your response framework:

• Understand what's behind the complaint before responding.  Sometimes, the complaint made is just the tip of the iceberg, and the real issue lies deeper.  Ask the complainant clarifying questions as appropriate if you suspect this is the case.
• Follow through on all channels.  If a conversation moves from one channel to another, say from Facebook to email, make sure you indicate that this has taken place.  This will allow others who have seen the start of a conversation know that you are in contact with the original poster.  You may also want to post the final resolution, or answer, on the original channel for others to see and for the complainant to verify that they have been assisted.
• Follow up after problems have been solved.  Once you have provided a solution or rectified the situation, follow up after a reasonable length of time to ensure your customer's satisfaction.

It is possible to provide excellent customer service using social tools, just check out this customer's experience with Netflix. 

"If you’re not engaging customers during the entire product life cycle through social media, you’re missing out. Because someone else will."

                   - Dennis Stoutenburgh, co-founder of Stratus Contact Solutions

Note: Where businesses or trade-names are mentioned, no endorsement is intended.