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RE: 🌱to💰• Growing Money In Your Yard Series • {pt2} • Grow What You Know & How to Find Profitable Opportunities
I am considering and experimenting with microgreens at the moment. I really like the pea sprouts. My local super market may consider selling them for me, as she supports alot of the local economy and farmers.
Micrgreens are great because of the fast turnaround time, @gardengirlcanada. Local markets and grocery stores do like to source products from local growers, so it could very quickly become a viable business opportunity for you.
I will suggest to sell directly to the consumer when first starting out. Selling to a retail market will fetch 100-500% or more over selling wholesale. You can make more and sell less by selling straight to consumer. I'll be covering all of this much more in depth in the next parts of this ongoing series. Thanks for your support!
Thank you. If you could cover doing business in a smaller community that would be great. Most articles directly target the larger cities and there are so many different challenges doing business in a smaller community. following you
There are, as you said, many challenges to establishing an ag-based business and developing a market for your products in a smaller community - but it also has advantages. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising and word spreads fast in a small town! You've got my wheels turning now! If you have any questions that you would like to see some particular attention to - feel free to toss them my way! I'll be sure to cover them in the coming parts of the series.
Ok here is one since you asked. Competing with the Farmer's Markets and the Menninits. Our Farmers markets charge over $1000 a year just to have your table or stall set up, so it is not a good investment for me with a smaller population, and we do have the Menninits to compete with as well. They are well established and not a far drive from our little community. My community is the population of approx $13,000. Thanks for the expanding your knowledge to the little people of the world. LOL
Glad you asked! The Universe has funny ways of aligning our paths..
I live literally a few houses down from farming Menninits that sell produce. We buy our blueberries from them, actually! 50lbs at a time ((because that is the minimum)) and they are tasty & cheap! Hard to compete with that if you intended to sell blueberries around here..haha
That's why I focused where many others weren't looking - specialty, niche based produce that, after some moseying around the community, I found were not being offered. Filling a gap in the market is much easier than fighting over market share with businesses with an already established presence and share of the market.
We don't do farmers markets either, it isn't economical fo our scale operation. We do have many private, small business around and that is the secret tool to use in small communities. Network with a business that will either sell yr produce for you or allow you access to their market. A gas station can quickly become a place to sell produce if you makes friends with the owner. Support them and they will support you. We actually have been utilizing a local gym to our advantage and the owner gets all the produce he can eat for allowing us to access his clientele. Win for all parties involved. His members love having fresh produce right outside the door after a workout.
We had to get really creative in order to find our success and we have done pretty well I'd say, for our first year selling to market. We are surrounded by farmers and gardeners and still have made our presence known in a very short time. We have a reservation list for our produce and it is sold by the time we pick it.
My next part of the series (coming this week) will be focused on What I do and How I do it - from how I started to where I am and what to avoid in between. I'll share my marketing secrets that I used to find success as a freelance artist, landscape designer, and now a tomato farming Steemian 😉
I'll be sure to cover our discussion here & hopefully get more people growing money in their yards!
Thanks again for your support and your time, @gardengirlcanada
You make good sense. The struggles are real with the Menninites. LOL I love the concept of the Gym's. For a small town we have 5 gym's/yoga studio's and chiropractic/message places. I will attempt to build a networking opportunity with them over the winter. I am already connected with them as my children are elite athletes so everyone know's my family in our community. Thanks again for sharing your brilliant concept. Yes the Universe does connect like minded folks, glad I met you and will be eagerly watching for your future posts.