That sounds like a good idea too, in these troubling times.
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That sounds like a good idea too, in these troubling times.
I'm selling self serve to my friends that call ahead. They leave a check and take the goodies. No contact necessary. I'm beginning to miss folks though.
Sales remain strong, Far more orders than typical, I think way more people are eating a good breakfast which includes real Maple Syrup. Not only from old faithful customers only either, lots of new customers too.
Cancelling maple weekend was definitely a blow. Porch sales have been steady, but I haven't compared to last year yet, but I think I'll sit down and do that. I have a wholesale order that I normally revisit every 6 months or so. I just filled that order again after about 2 weeks, so things really exploded there. That got my attention. It's a farm store that sells a lot of local meats, eggs, vegetables, etc. I agree people have time to eat better, bake, etc. right now. The NYT just had a maple pie recipe a couple days ago. Not as good the French-Canadian versions we see on this site. I think seeing maple in recipes motivates people to use it. It works on me!
Here in Canada our money now is plastic bills,might not do well in oven,so we carry cash and cheques out to the attached greenhouse with a pair of pinchers or something and let it sit in the hot sun for a week or so.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tmeeeh
Several years ago I listened to a presentation that made the point that scratch cooking was such a small percentage of the population that market researchers couldn't even measure it.Quote:
Originally Posted by ecolbeck
Sad actually!
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I'd bet with Covid 19 the percentage climbed. I know my wife used to bake fairly often, now she bakes almost daily, so much so that she bought 100# of flour and just ordered 50# more. And one son of ours just started making his own pizza from scratch. He has perfected it so it is easily mistaken for the local most liked pizza shop pizzas.
My wife also has some of her friends cooking with maple too. I have one customer who buys an average of 26 HG of syrup every year and they use it, don't sell it.
That's why I can't get flour. You're hoarding it!
I just crunched the numbers. Porch pickup is good, but I'm still down from last year. Missing maple weekend is a big hole to fill. It's a little over 10% of my annual sales. My other big chunk of sales comes from farmers markets. I'm on the fence on what I want to do about those. They will open. Our state has deemed them essential, but I know I'm not really essential and I'm not sure how much I want to put everyone at risk being there. This is just a hobby for me. I'll re-evaluate as we get to May and June. Hopefully, we can put this in our rearview this summer.
I know lots of producers who do well at farmer's markets, I did one just a single year and decided I could do better with my time.
I have seen a considerable increase in online orders and "curbside pickups" in the last several months. Have also added a couple wholesale outlets through local ag. producers "aggregating sales" with some unique local food offerings.
All my wholesale outlets have been doing well and the one that had to shut down in March opened back up and has been doing ok. Only doing one local Farmer's Market this season and it has been a little below average but overall good. We decided to not do any markets in Boston this season as they are facing serious restrictions.
It's hard to say what the next several months will bring but I plan to keep "pivoting" as necessary to keep sales going well. The whole Covid situation has definitely forced some changes, with the big one being website and social media development. It's a work in progress...