Where are Your Farmers’ Market Signs? Maine is largely free of the scourge of billboards, but at the cost of some fairly complex rules around signage (as recently outlined in an article in the Portland Press Herald). Fortunately, the state allows farmers’ markets more latitude than bricks-and-mortar businesses in the area of signage. Here is […]
Best Practices
Marrying CSA to farmers’ market
June 22, 2015 CategoriesA 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 […]
Why do we use computer scales?
June 22, 2015 Categoriesby Bob Bowen When we started in the farmers market, we sold chickens and meat with a small (and CHEAP!) set of table scales. They weren’t sealed for retail sales but no one caught us. And we kept checking them to assure us that we were being fair. And we tended to charge to the […]
Creating customer bonds with presence, abundance, and generosity
June 22, 2015 CategoriesTraditional 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 CategoriesIn 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 […]