Ep. 424 - Farmers' Market Recap and Charismatic Vendors!

With football season upon us, school back in session...change is in the air!  Join Rob today as he discusses the farmers' market last weekend in this Monday Farmers' Market Update!  

You'll hear how Rob and Mom worked the farmers' market by themselves (and why), the changes to our market booth display and how we modified the booth to work more efficiently.  
  
With increased sales and increased feedback from the customers, we are considering making even *more* of one of our new products, especially as we expand our market presence.  

To conclude the show, Rob talks about a new vendor at the market and the charismatic pair that run their booth...specifically about how they promote their product at the market.  

Today's episode is packed full with market updates along with a teaser of tomorrow's show which has to do with the updated item photos that will soon be posted in the online store!  

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Discussion Links:

Hola Island Provisions on Instagram • Photos and Videos
👨🏽‍🍳We bring authentic Caribbean cuisine to your home!
🧡Order from our ghost kitchen to try our sandwich creations!!
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Ms Cooking Darling her/she. Video creator. I love to cook & do food/products reviews. Twitch: welcomedarlings TikTok: tiktok.com/@welcome_darlings

York Meadow Farm: Lacto-Fermented Foods
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Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

If we stand together, we'll never fall.

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We can make a difference.

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Well, hi there and welcome back to another episode of the All Around Growth Podcast. Today is Monday, September 19th, 2022. My name is Rob Kaiser and I am your host. This is a show where we co-create life together with our families. A show where you join me with my family here on our small farm and homestead. A show where we think about and talk about a lot as we grow in all aspects of our lives. And I'm glad you're back with me on this Monday morning. I hope that you had a great weekend out there. I'm sure it was a busy weekend for you, whether you were out at the football game with family or out in the gardens rolling solo. You know, it was a busy weekend for us as well here at the farm. And part of that busy weekend included the farmers market on Saturday morning. And since it's a Monday morning, today's show is going to be a farmers market recap episode. Now, as many of you know, we attend the Medina Square Farmers Market in downtown Medina. And Medina is a city inn and the county seat of Medina County, Ohio, about 33 miles south of Cleveland and 23 miles west of Akron, within the Greater Cleveland area. And uh so there's a little bit of context about where we are. And now at this point in the season, like many farmers' markets in the area, and many farmers' markets across the Midwest for that matter, and across the country, they're they're slowing down, and many markets are gonna actually come to a close in mid-October. And there are many opportunities for additional markets in the shoulder and winter seasons, and we'll discuss more on those opportunities in future weeks. But for now, we're gonna focus on the primary farmers market, where we're at, and the fact that it is still in full swing because harvest season is on. Alright, now last week in the farmers in the market recap episode last Monday, we mentioned that school was back in session, and that while we normally experience a drop in business after Labor Day, sales were better than expected last week. So we were curious to see what the market had in store for Saturday as we got prepared for market on Friday evening. Mom was doing her prep work and making new batches of hand cream. While I took care of most things for the market, including inventory and packing and things like that. Because unfortunately, with school being back in session, dad caught a bit of a bug last week, and by the end of classes on Thursday, he was he was not feeling well. And come Friday, luckily he didn't have any classes on Friday, but Friday he was out, you know, just out of commission, and as was Saturday. So no market for pops um this weekend. So, you know, luckily, um, real quick, you know, luckily by yesterday afternoon he was feeling considerably better, which is good news. Feeling better, sounds better. So good news there. But this was the first market where mom and I worked together as a team. Uh, dad and I have worked many a market together. Um, like for example, this this past winter, even before I quit my day job, dad and I were working Saturday markets solo at Richardson Farms, their winter market in their greenhouse. And that was a lot of fun. Dad and I got accustomed to working together, and it made leaving my job that much easier because I was confident in my ability to work with my dad as a team, right? But working with mom, working together with her, uh, this was new. I've made a batch of soap with her and I've done some things with her, but never really worked a market. So I think we were both a little curious how this was going to work out. But all in all, we had a good experience together, and I think we make an equally good team at the market, just like Dad and I do. So, what was nice about working the market with mom is that we both experimented with different display ideas. Now, me, I I took this experimentation to a whole new level. I also modified my you know my side of the booth because we've got one big tent, like an easy up, and then two six-foot tables so that our tables extend out beyond the sides of the tent just a little bit, and we can get away with that with the market uh setup, um, whether it's on the street or on the square. So uh, either way, um, in addition to the display changes, I I like I said, I modified this the side that I work on to make it more efficient for a one-person operation. Like, for example, the location of the bags for the customers where they were hung and the manner in which the product was laid out. I just it like instead of having a display of products and most things stashed in the cooler andor the fridge, um, and a considerable amount of table space dedicated to samples, I incorporated a uh like stack them high and watch them fly technique that many market gardeners speak of. Like, for example, I just lined up the products six deep of everything and just had a little space for samples. And we'll we'll touch more on samples later. So this this kind of uh this kind of display and and and technique was was new and it seemed to work well for the customers who bring their own bags, which is a significant portion of the customer base. Maybe 30 to 40 percent of the people who are shopping do that. So I think there were some benefits to this, and uh I'm going to try to encourage Dad to think about this as well, and we may end up bringing back a four-foot table due to our location on the street, which is right by a crosswalk, and that gives us a little bit of extra um frontage, if you will. So, anyways, more on that later, we'll see what happens. But um the ease of customer interaction made this kind of setup preferable when working as a single crowd guy. You know, a lot of times with my dad, I'm taking orders, I'm grabbing product, I'm filling, I'm putting it in bags while he's taking payment, or he's filling orders and doing all of that while I'm offering samples. But for me, it allows me to offer samples, encourage product or customers to take their own product, bag their own product if they've got bags, and interact with the the cash cards or however we're doing transactions. So um, it also made product restocking easier during the slow times, so there was that as well, and um you know I'm I'm one of these people who is all about experimentation and change and trying to incorporate some new things, so I'm very pleased with how that went. Now, in terms of how the actual market went, the market, as usual, was slow to start when it opens at 9 a.m. The regulars were, you know, some of the regulars were there to get in and out, but generally traffic picks up around 10 a.m. And all in all, the traffic was steady throughout the day, but it was definitely slower than normal. And I think that we are finally experiencing the drop in sales and customer traffic that we normally talk about and experience after Labor Day. But it wasn't quite like the drops in sales that mom and dad experienced in the past two years, and that is encouraging. While they were less than they have been, uh sales of the day were on par with my personal expectations. So that's good. That ultimately, at the end of the day, I'm pleased with how the market turned out and uh the product that we moved. A couple things. Um it's clear that we are growing and there is an increasing interest in our product, especially the kimchi. We had multiple people coming up and asking for that. Um we we we just don't have any available at this time. We've got three, you know, you know, just uh a big batch of kimchi results in probably a little over uh probably results in about a you know eleven gallons of of product, if you will. So we've got that spread out throughout five three different five-gallon buckets, and we have two separate batches. So we have six five-gallon buckets of kimchi actively fermenting right now, and in my opinion, we need to do more. Um, I'm going to think about that this morning as I take product photos, and I'll get to that in a little bit, you know. But I'll be doing a lot of thinking and mental planning uh for the week because dad will be doing the produce pickup tomorrow morning, and I need to think about uh how much, you know, like what do we need, and are we going to make more kimchi this week with the store opening and everything else? I there's just a lot going on and a lot to think about, but um so we'll have to consider making more kimchi moving forward. That's the bottom line. People love it, and people are even even buying the brine, right? Um, I've been bringing the brine to market. We got some special bottles for it. It seems to be selling as well. There's an increasing interest in the brine. So we'll see. We'll see. Um now before we kind of get to a point where we're wrapping things up with the episode. I I do want to share one other noteworthy observation I made. Now there's a new vendor that market this year, and the vendor's name is Hola Island Provisions. I'm gonna link to them in the show notes, and uh this is uh Lewis and Miss Cooking Darling, Ms. Cooking Darling, who is his partner, and I'm gonna link to both of them in the show notes, and I mention both of them because well they're they're they're two separate uh like she does her thing, he does his, but they're working together at the market. Um Lewis has a very charismatic personality and he's a great market dude. Now his partner, uh I I'm not even sure what her name is, but she goes by the the name Ms. Cooking Darling on social media. You can just search Ms. Cooking Darling, MS Cooking Darling, Ms. Cooking Darling, and you will find her everywhere. Um on a lot of the social medias that I I don't use, like Twitch and TikTok and things like that. Um but she's definitely on Instagram and YouTube and she I I bring her up because I watched her as people walked by us but then stopped by their booth because she just she crushes it with with the samples. Now, whole island provisions, they make some bomb marinades, and the way that they push their product is Lewis comes in with this setup, makes some really amazing pulled pork with you know with their marinade, obviously, and then they just hand out little bits of this on this uh on this bread. You know, the bread's maybe about the the size of the palm of your hand, or at least the palm of my hand. My hands are perhaps bigger than yours. Um but it makes not, you know, if you had a secondary piece of bread, it'd make like a little nice little sandwich, like a slider size almost. But basically it's a little piece of bread to hold this meat, and you can kind of roll it up and and eat it like a mini, almost like a taco of sorts, but it gives people the ability to taste this and say, Oh wow, this is fantastic. This is how I use it, or one way that I could use it, and then they're pushing the product. And it's it's so the reason she's crushing it with the samples is here's like here's what I mean. When there are people approaching, like when there are people walking up, she's actively preparing samples and then handing them out. She's not asking people if they want it, she's welcoming people in. She calls everyone darling, she's like, hello, darling, here, take a sample. Here's our pulled pork, you know, hey darling, here's some sample, here's a sample, you know. And and I like there's no way for me to mimic her, but believe me, I I I took it in and just sort of watched her for a while. And you know, she invites people in, she makes them feel welcome and comfortable, calling everybody darling. It's she's like your grandma, except she's she's like my age or something, probably a little like probably a little younger, even. I I don't know. It's she's got this this very personality that's warm and charming, and you you know, you want to take the food that she's giving you because you feel like it's been prepared with love, and it has been. And um there I think there's a lot to learn from watching someone like her. And since since they've been at the market, since I've interacted with them a little bit, I've been watching them on social media too, and I think there's a lot to learn from how they both utilize their social media presence. Um, Lewis primarily through Whole Island Provisions and Miss Uh Cooking Darling with her own channel, her own personal brand. And if they're interacting together on Whole Island Provisions, I I don't really know. I there's a lot that I want to talk to them about still, and I look forward to getting to know them better. Either way, I'm gonna link to them in the show notes so you guys can see what I'm talking about, because I think they're definitely worth checking out. You know, I encourage you to do that because that's what I'm doing. You know, I'm I'm I'm always trying to learn from my peers and always trying to grow here on the show, and I think that that is what it's all about. Now, regarding other news on the farm and homestead, the first day of autumn is Thursday, and you know what that means. We got Old Farmers Almanac coming up this week on the podcast, but on the farm, that means the grand opening of the online store is taking place. That's right. You will be able to purchase all of the products that I talk about, all of the fermented foods, all the bath and body products that we bring and make to the market here in Medina, you can buy them from the comfort of your own home. I've been talking about email subscribers and how they certainly get a discount for the grand opening, but you, as a listener of the podcast, receive an even better discount for an even longer period of time. So when the store opens this Thursday, simply use the promo or discount code AllARoundGrowth, and you'll receive 25% off your order. Okay, so for all of your support over the past couple of years with this show, and especially over the past couple of months with all of the transition, that's what what I want to do, what we want to do, to say thank you for everything that you do by being a part of this community. And speaking of community, if you want to get in on a test run of orders this week, just let me know. The best way to let me know that you want to get in on that and get a little taste of the action ahead of time, take a sneak peek of the online store, check it out, and even place an order before the store officially opens, you've got to be in the Telegram group. t.me slash all around growth from your internet browser will give you the opportunity to participate in the chat and get into everything that we're getting into behind the scenes, right? So check it out. And uh t.me slash all around growth, that's where the action happens. So, guys, I will see you in the telegram group later, but for now, it's time for me to get into the kitchen and get to work taking photos of our products. So we'll see you in tomorrow's episode as I detail out all of the equipment that I used in the photo shoot today. And this is Rob Kaiser, and thank you.