MFFM is looking for farmers to submit their price data to the Maine Farmers’ Market Price Report for the 2024 season. We aim to recruit up to 50 producers, statewide, to share their prices. This information is valuable to multiple stakeholders including farmers, customers, and business development services. On a weekly basis, we’ll have updated pricing information available on this website. If you sign up, we […]
Pricing
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 […]
Setting prices synthetically rather than analytically
January 30, 2015 CategoriesAnalysis 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 CategoriesFirst 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 […]