The books / Selling from the Farm / chapter 10 of 14
A shop of your own
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
A roadside stand asks nothing of a passer-by beyond noticing it. A shop asks for a reason to stop:
- somewhere to park
- a sign visible from the road
- a door that says the farm is open even with nobody outside
What it buys back is more of the same trade: the same honey at the same rate, to more people who already drive that road.
Small farms that make this jump describe it that way: not a new business, a bigger door onto the same one, made once a farm has more to sell than the stand can clear.
In this game a shop takes about twice what a stand takes a day, honey, pieces and mead alike. On four hives' honey alone its price takes nearly ten years to come back; with a cellar of mead, about four. It is a building for a farm that is growing.