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UP / Thumb of Michigan | Freind and I grew 7 acres of fresh vegetables. One year experiment. Made lots of mistakes, just didn't have the energy to go another year. And we were 21 and could sleep real fast then.
I've never worked so hard in my life as we did growing veggies.
We wholesaled everything. Lots of deliveries were to fruit and veggie stands between 4 and 6 am. Many had what would be considered a large garden out back, gave the appearance of truly home grown on site stuff. The larger stands actually grew very little % wise of what they sold. But there was the illusion that they did. The real large ones went to either (in my area) the Bay City Wholesale Market, or the really large ones were buying at the Eastern Market in Detroit. https://easternmarket.org/ Both had retail sales as well, we were delivering to each of them at around midnight, they closed the wholesale end at 4 or 5 am. I had a friend moving 80 acres of onions through the Eastern Market. A pretty large egg producer I used to sell fertilizer to was selling an awful lot of eggs through the Eastern Market. A few semi loads every day. Another neighbor sold all their table stock potatoes through there, I think they were growing over a hundred acres at that time.
The quality of stuff, especially at the Eastern Market, was exceptional. If we wanted to sell tomatoes there, for example, they were in a box and all looked like clones. The same size, no marks, no scars, no stems. Anything otherwise would get almost given away at 4:50 AM. Or, hauled home and dumped.
And, there were actually some stands that did grow most of their produce. We were filling in gaps in their production. For example: they may have some days where they're short on tomatoes for example. Being short isn't good, they want consistent. Some focused on a few acres of 3 or 4 particular items, and bought the rest of whatever they sold out front.
We weren't the right size to deal with any larger produce seller exclusively. Just didn't have the volume. And we couldn't deal with the small mom and pops either. If their wholesale grocery supplier came in and saw veggies they didn't sell the store, they'd "forget" to bring them produce in the off season.
At the same time we were growing the stuff, a buddy bought an old pick up and built racks on the back. He'd go around to stores and stands and take orders in the afternoon, fill the order at either produce farms with out a retail stand, or he'd go to wholesale markets like the Eastern Market and buy. He had it figured out way better than we did. No production risk, very little money out lay and cash flow was very good. He did that for a few years until GM started hiring again.
The "you touch you buy" thing was mentioned. We had that policy on sweet corn. And this one still bothers me when I see it at stores or stands. I'd have to explain that I had professional sweet corn pickers hired (usually it was my buddy and I, hired kids don't seem to roll out of bed early enough) and the customers didn't need to destroy a bunch of ears by peeling them back before finding what they thought was the perfect 4 ears. Thye usually had no clue what it was they were looking for anywhere. We had a 100% guarantee that every ear was ripe and no worms. If they found otherwise and returned the offending ears, we'd replace them 2 to 1. My buddy had a longer fuse than me, I wouldn't deal with anyone who showed up and started peeling husks back. He'd give them one shot anyway.
Thats along way to get around to my point. I don't want to get up at midnight anymore to go to a wholesale market and have to buy a relatively large quantity of anything. No matter who grew it. I also don't want to get up real early and work in my own garden truth be told. So, I frequent local stands. I won't pay one penny extra for any what I consider gimmicky stuff. That includes organic or Amish grown. But I generally don't mind paying over grocery store prices- even if the stand and the store got the same stuff from the same wholesale place- because I like the atmosphere and I still like the thought that some of it was even grown out back. Place I bought some stuff at yesterday actually does grow everything they sell, its one of 2 I try to frequent. | |
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Produce Stand Prices
