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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jan 17, 2012 21:00:17 GMT -5
The local university conducted an anonymous survey last fall of the people that get a weekly basket of vegetables from me..
I was surprised at some of the responses...
The number one reason people listed for participating in my CSA is taste. I never even considered that. It's not in any of my marketing materials. Ooops! Guess I know what gets added to my web site next time I rewrite it. I should have known... I've been emphasizing how fresh my produce is... I should have taken my marketing the next step and made the claim that fresher = tastier.
The second most popular reason listed for participating was to support local farmers.
For the most part, people didn't care that I grow organically.
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Post by littleminnie on Jan 20, 2012 17:20:29 GMT -5
Have you ever used survey monkey to let your customers fill out a survey? It is awesome and cheap. I do a couple CSA surveys per season.
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Post by 12540dumont on Jan 21, 2012 15:29:47 GMT -5
Minnie, what did you ask your customers?
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Post by littleminnie on Jan 22, 2012 22:42:47 GMT -5
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Post by davida on Jan 22, 2012 23:02:18 GMT -5
An excellent survey. You opened yourself up to criticism but it is obvious that you desire to know what people are truly thinking. I admire your openness and your ability to handle the truth. Enjoyed the marketing at the end for you to supply "value added" products. |
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Post by 12540dumont on Jan 23, 2012 13:24:23 GMT -5
Thanks Minnie. This year my husband want me to put postcards in the boxes with new varieties, for example: The Golden Melon on the Left is Hale's Best. The Green Melon on the right is Rocky Ford.I liked the Golden Melon, Hale's Best I liked the Green Melon, Rocky Ford I didn't like either of them I liked them both The Melons were picked just right The Melons were over ripe The Melons were under ripe In the box, are you receiving: Too many melons Not enough melons Just the right amount. Leo wants me to select postcards for certain of the crops, melons, tomatoes, certainly anything that's new like capers, and some of the canned goods. I'm not going to send them in the mail, but tie them to their box and ask them to return them. I did this once two years ago and found out that I was canning too much jam and not enough savory things. (The winner was Enchilada sauce!) Go figure that. The constant requests are for Apple Butter, Salsa, Spaghetti Sauce, Strawberry Jam, Strawberry lemonade and anything baked. Dried Tomatoes and fruit roll-ups are also very popular. I get requests for these off season. I really appreciate your posting your survey. Really helps me to formulate what questions I want to ask. Although we do eggs, we tried to do a meat thing and it just didn't work. Attachments:
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Post by littleminnie on Jan 28, 2012 21:23:47 GMT -5
You know information gathering is so important. You just can never guess what people are thinking! When you think they want more of one thing they want less of it. We had a bad tomato year last year and I fretted about it. Then at the end of the season one of the customers said they had too many tomatoes! They wanted more potatoes but they had 4 grown children at home. I am not selling shares for $400 to supply 6 adults. Anyway I was just looking over my survey results because I haven't had much response yet this season. 4 out of 7 people said they would 'definitely' recommend my CSA to a friend. 2 said 'yes' they would recommend it and 1 said 'possibly'. One person had a less than sterling set of responses unfortunately. So I just need to chill out and by June I should have a full number of customers.  |
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Post by paquebot on Jan 29, 2012 3:18:59 GMT -5
A lot of the "taste" part is psychological. It comes from a local farm and therefore it must be better. It does not matter if the CSA bought something in bulk and shipped in from a thousand miles away. That's been shown a number of times at farmer and produce markets nationwide.
Martin
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Post by littleminnie on Jan 29, 2012 21:21:47 GMT -5
People who buy and resell at market making the customer think it is homegrown and not the same as the grocery store are about one step above child molesters IMO.  As I will soon be on the board of my market I will be finally putting a foot down about the farm who pretends to grow everything themselves and doesn't at our market. moo ha ha ha |
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Post by paquebot on Jan 29, 2012 22:29:58 GMT -5
What do you do when you run into a case where a vendor is selling for an Amish farmer? We have a lot of that and it's quite accepted.
Martin
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jan 29, 2012 23:18:59 GMT -5
It would be simple to require that all produce come from the county, or the tri-county, or from within 30 miles of market, or whatever. No matter if it's a farmer or reseller behind the table.
It would be straight forward to require disclosure of where the produce was grown. It would be OK to ban reselling of produce. I'm OK with resellers, as long as they prominently disclose that they are resellers and not actually farmers.
One market I attended in the past had another market across the street at the same time. One was for growers the other for resellers. The resellers usually offered more variety and had larger quantities.
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Post by 12540dumont on Jan 30, 2012 0:48:37 GMT -5
Yikes, Now you know why I no longer go to the farmer' market in CA. To prevent resellers, the county verifies all produce.
In the old days, think 10 years ago, it was enough that the seeds were in the greenhouse. Now they want to see them in the field. That means every time the Co Inspector comes out to see my farm, he charges by them minute from his office to my farm. There's an office 10 minutes from my farm. Alas, my inspector has to come from San Jose, that's 20-45 minutes, depending on traffic.
When he's here, I don't want him to chat. FGS, I'm paying by the frigging minute.
Follow this: $50 each time they come out to inspect.
Okay, so I want to pull out broccoli to make room for beans. $50., I want to pull out lettuce to make room for corn, $50. If it wasn't in the field when they inspected, I can't sell it. Who's making money?
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Post by steev on Jan 30, 2012 1:03:26 GMT -5
You know full well who's making money: not you, not the County. Agribusiness! Your $50 inspection is chump change to a corporation that's 10 or 100 or 1000 times bigger than you.
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Post by littleminnie on Jan 30, 2012 19:13:34 GMT -5
Well every market is different, but our market is 100% vendor grown/made and within 30 miles. So the farm in question has a large greenhouse operation and a farm store on the hwy. No one says they can't buy and resell at their store. The problem is this farmer has his daughter in law who doesn't grow or know anything sell at a farmers' market each day of the week with everything available in the store. They have corn way too early and radishes they don't grow and who knows what else because it is all under the cover of a working farm. Other vendors have voiced concerns about their super early corn for instance, but the market management would find corn growing on their farm so they wouldn't know any better.
With a market as tiny as ours I feel there should also be a operation size limit. I understand that a larger vendor sometimes pulls in more customer traffic and I am all for having as many vendors as possible. But since our market is so small and some vendors are solo like me it really isn't fair to compete with them- especially since they are buying and reselling.
I apologize for getting this thread off track.
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Post by 12540dumont on Jan 30, 2012 20:51:38 GMT -5
Minnie, I don't think it is off track. Some folks have voiced the same concern to me about the farmer's market, which is why they bought CSA shares.
There' a fellow at our local market who has a vat food place make his jam, and just relabels it with his farm info. It's really kind of sorry. Of course there's a place for folks like that here, it's called the "flea market". They have 20 farm stands...selling pineapples, etc.
What irks me is the fellow who wen to my drop off spot after reading the blog to convince them to start carrying his stuff as well. I can't compete with a CSA that owns 100 acres and 200 employees. They let folks choose what goes in the box. Ack!
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