The books / Selling from the Farm / chapter 1 of 14
The going rate
All chapters
- The going rate
- A price has a shoulder
- What the road brings
- Regulars
- A new thing on the shelf
- Why a bargain spreads faster
- Pricing a jar so it sells out before the next crop
- The co-op is a valve
- Market day
- A shop of your own
- Signs, leaflets and adverts
- Selling by post
- Selling drink
- What a keeper is really choosing
The same kilo of honey is worth two different things depending on who buys it. Sold in bulk to a co-op it trades close to the farmgate price, a few coins over what a jar costs to fill. Sold a jar at a time it fetches the direct retail price, often two to three times as much. Wholesale pays for volume and certainty; direct retail pays for the jar in the hand.
A four-hive farm makes about forty kilos a year. A roadside stand at the going rate could sell four hundred and sixty. The stand was never the ceiling; the road is, and it is slow.
In this game the co-op pays 12 a kilo on the spot; the stand pays 18, a jar or two a night.