Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Its a little jump into a big ocean




So This last Friday i officially began my farm-gate market at my parents farm. The name that i finally decided on after a few weeks of wavering and debating in my head about what kind of message i wanted it to convey to customers is Oak Ridges Finest Fruits and Vegetables . While i still feel a little uncertain about the name i think that over time it will be begin to grow on me as it is easy to remember for customers to hopefully associate it with high quality locally produced fruits and vegetables. For right now i will be doing the market on Friday afternoon from 2-7pm and if the first few weeks go well i hope to sell on Saturday mornings also. The first market day was ill be honest pretty slow and i only had three customers and only one wasn't related to me. I did have a few neighbors that stopped in and said they were interested and that they will be back this Friday While i still did manage to sell a small amount of product i am still very optimistic as many of the cars driving by were slowing down and looking. While i know it will take time to develop a customers base i do not feel that i am wasting my time or resources as i know that the level of interest in my area for locally produced produce and preserves is quite high and still has lots of room to grow. Over the next few weeks i am planning on trying different things to attract attention to my farm-gate in one of my next few posts i will show you all some of the signs i have had produced for advertising and how successful they are in getting the attention of the traffic passing by. Well that is it for now hopefully this week i will begin to get more customers and traffic stopping by.