P24-—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, October 22,1983
Roadside markets offer
tremendous potential to area
farmers and consumers. But I'm
afraid much of the potential is
being lost. As a result, consumers
pay more for fruits and vegetables
that are less than farm fresh and
farmers wind up wholesaling
produce that could have gone
directly to consumers.
The roadside market scene in
this area is a mixed bag, and
because of that consumers aren’t
spending nearly what they might.
Consider my own experience. I had
occasion to be in downstate
Delaware and wanted to offer
some of Delaware’s fine fresh
produce to my visiting relatives
from England. Delicious sweet
corn, red ripe tomatoes and one of
those big juicy watermelons. The
perfect midsummer additions to
an otherwise excellent meal. And
so I stopped at one of those nice
little roadside stands that seems to
be run by a farmer and would
therefore be offering fresh farm
produce. I bought the best
watermelon they had ac
cordions to the saleslady the
most expensive tomatoes and a
dozen good ears of com.
The prices were okay, not any
tremendous bargains, but I an
ticipated that the prices would be
secondary to the taste. I wasn’t
really bargain shopping, I wanted
good produce. Well, at the risk of
sounding like a restaurant critic, I
must say the sweet com had ex
cellent taste, but the ears were
small and not filled out very well
Farm
Talk
Jerry Webb
Delaware Extension
on the smaller end. The tomatoes
were overripe, soft and tasteless.
And the watermelon was a
disaster. It was obviously
overripe, dry and mushy inside,
and was deemed unfit to serve.
So much for eight bucks worth of
fresh farm produce. I couldn’t
have done any worse picking a
supermarket at random and taking
what they had to offer. At least 1
could have returned the produce
without making a 40-mile drive.
Herein lies the nub of the
problem when it comes to getting
fanners and consumers together
at a roadside stand. First of all, the
shopper must make a special trip,
sometimes several miles from
home. Then there’s the matter of
quality. How can the buyer know if
Ihe watermelon is in proper con
dition? That the ears of com don’t
have any worms, and that the
tomatoes are fresh? What good is a
guarantee when the stand is many
miles from home?
Roadside stands have the
potential of offering farm-fresh
produce of the highest possible
quality directly to the consumer.
That means eliminating all those
middlemen and all of the quality
damaging delays required through
the usual market channels. Con
sumers know that and so they
anticipate better than super
market quality and less than
supermarket prices two options
that are certainly within the realm
of possibility. After all, why
shouldn’t a farmer be able to sell
high quality produce directly to the
consumer at a little better price
than what would be found in the
grocery store? I don’t think con
sumers expect great bargains, but
they do want the prices to be a little
less and certainly the quality to be
the very best.
1 A friend of mine who runs a
roadside stand in Pennsylvania
/ does quite well in an out-of-the-way
. because be and his family
guard the quality of their produce
very carefully. The sweet com is
picked each morning bright and
early and all that doesn’t sell is
discarded. Everything that’s sold
comes off the farm, or in the case
of ice cream, honey and potatoes,
it’s made quite clear that they
weren’t produced on that farm.
But even then assurances of
quality are there. A money back
guarantee is not really worth much
to the consumer who goes to that
particular roadside stand. It’s
probably 10 miles from the nearest
town on a secondary road that goes
to nowhere. The homemaker who
stops for sweet com and tomatoes
goes considerably out of her way to
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get there. To have to repeat the
trip just to get her money back
would be an imposition, and in fact
would probibly mean the end of
her shopping expeditions.
Many roadside markets operate
the same way. Their-owners know
that farm-fresh quality is what
they really have to sell. -And so
they guard that reputation very
carefully. But other stands are less
concerned with quality and repeat
business, being content to get what
they can while the customer is in
the store and let tomorrow take
care of itself.
I’m firmly convinced that the old
merchandising adage “let the
buyer beware” will not work in
roadside marketing. There are
other alternatives. A consumer
who spends six or seven months a
year buying produce in a super
market doesn’t have to shop the
roadside markets; and probably
won't unless to encouraged by
price, quality, convenience, or
some other strong incentive. I also
suspect that one bad roadside
marketing experience is enough
for many consumers so that they
turn away from all roadside
stands. By the same token, a
positive experience opens up the
opportunity for other roadside
stands.
This mutually beneficial
strategy brings me to this point;
Delaware needs a roadside
marketing certification program
that assures consumers that those
participating farmers are selling
homegrown produce that is
guaranteed fresh. That the market
operators subscribe to a code of
ethics and that they are certified
by a regulatory agency as to
merchandising standards. A
properly 1 designed certification
emblem could then serve as an
advertising 'device that would
assure shoppers that a stand
displaying the certification sign
would be up to par when it comes to
qualify, cleanliness, fair mer
chandising practices, and so on.
There is tremendous potential in
roadlsde marketing. Hundreds of
thousands of consumers who would
spend large sums of money for the
bountiful produce of agriculture.