Blog entries by Tom Roberts

About Tom Roberts

When I started attending the Brewer Farmers’ Market back in August of 1983, my sole concern was being able to sell the produce my farm was growing at a good price. After attending market for a year or two, I began to realize that how the market was organized had a great impact on my sales. And how the market was organized also influenced how it made decisions about dues, new members, what could be sold at market, and how it promoted itself—and this, too, had an impact on my sales. So I got involved in the market’s steering committee and began to understand how various market members thought the market should operate. Some wanted a market czar, some wanted everyone to be allowed to do their own thing. But everyone seemed to agree that if the market as a whole did well, then so did they.

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Marrying CSA to farmers’ market

June 22, 2015 by Tom Roberts Categories

A debit-type CSA works well at farmers’ market I have attended farmers’ markets since 1983, yet the whole idea of a CSA has always fascinated me as a practical method to market my farm’s produce. Having customers get a box of food each week that they paid for at the beginning of the season seemed […]

Creating customer bonds with presence, abundance, and generosity

June 22, 2015 by Tom Roberts Categories

Traditional retailing wisdom says it is of the utmost importance to give customers exactly what they pay for. Any less, and you are cheating the customer; any more and you are cheating yourself. Being rather non-traditionalist myself, allow me to offer an amended view. Many markets and farmers have a budget for what they refer […]

The Shō of Market

June 22, 2015 by Tom Roberts Categories

In many Japanese martial arts, there is a differentiation between the SHŌ (say ‘show’) of the art and the DŌ (say ‘dough’) of the art. Basically, the DŌ is the functional part of the art, how to make the movements and what they are useful for, both in terms of spiritual centering and self-defense. On […]

Setting prices synthetically rather than analytically

January 30, 2015 by Tom Roberts Categories

Analysis tries to understand things by breaking them down into their components. Synthesis tries to understand a thing by combining and processing information in its surroundings. Do you determine your prices by building them up from their component costs? Or do you look at how your prices will fit into the entire market ecology that […]

The role of subsidies in determining the price of produce

January 30, 2015 by Tom Roberts Categories

First off, it is important to note that pricing of our products is probably third or fourth (or even further!) down the list of why most of our shoppers buy from us. Nevertheless, discussions about pricing tend to bring out the economists who are willing to provide us with a lesson in Economics 101. Often […]