How My Farm Stand Brought in $125k A year
Over 13 years of farming, I’m not going to say I’ve done it all, but I certainly have sold to every type of customer out there. Farmers markets, which were never my cup of tea (great for getting your name out there, but for most of us, the cost/benefit doesn’t pan out in the long term). Sales to florists and small wholesalers (such a great way to move more product, but tricky for a tiny farm in California where all the huge flower farms are able to produce and sell cheaper - oh the ole ‘economy of scale!’). CSA’s, deliveries, workshops, and weddings - lots and lots of weddings.
But my humble little shack of a farm stand turned out to the the best, more gratifying, and by far most profitable thing I’d ever done with my farm. I shrunk my farm down, grew only about ten crops, worked a really minimal schedule, and was able to build to $125k in sales through the stand alone. On about half an acre.
I did it by:
Diving in deep and not letting any detail slide
Devoting all my resources to it (though the business continued to bring in another $120k or so through other flower sales)
Believing in slow and steady growth
Investing in targeted marketing
Being strategic with my pricing
Employing master design schools
…and being lazer focused on margins
Sales started at a trickle, but I built the following slowly, hosted a few ‘farm stand parties’ to spread the word, and made more and more street signs that begged people to turn off the main drag to stop and shop. There were some ups and downs, like when the huge old oak that we specifically build the stand under had to be cut down so it didn’t fall down. That was a hot summer for the stand flowers, who downright withered.
But the real magic happened when I moved the stand to a new, better location. My lease on one field had ended so I had to move anyways, and I knew there wouldn’t be enough traffic at my new field itself. So I drew a circle on a map and posted it on Instagram, and asked if anyone had a lead on a ‘shady spot with a pull out on a busy road’. And guess what - that very day a friend of a friend of a friend sent me a DM, saying “This is weird, you described our house and drew a circle around it. Let’s talk.”
And the rest was history. My stand was hyper efficient for me and my team. In the later years we sold an average of 15 bouquets a day, for $35 each, for 35 weeks, on the honor system, accepting Venmo and cash in a safe. The bouquets were gorgeous, and they had about 8 - 10 stems. I fiercely marked up each flower 3x from its wholesale (to florist) sales price. It took us 30 seconds on average to make a bouquet and we didn’t have to stick to complicated recipes.
And the stand was magic. The honor system is downright charming, and I made sure that the stand was cute and inviting and unexpected and had just enough decoration and just enough information for those who wanted to learn more.
Check out all the love we got. It still warms my heart. Now that we’ve moved the farm to Oregon and are essentially starting over, we’ll eventually rebuild. It just might look a little different.
And the follow-up story for another day: I was able to sell the farm stand business and recoup some of the hard earned sweat and money we put into it over the years. A win-win.
My Top Farm Stand Tips.
-
Signage
We started with hand-painted signs, which were totally great, but upgraded to professional wood signs. Over the years I built up to about ten road signs, indicating exactly where to turn, where to slow down, where to park, and how much farther. I drove the route and then I drove it again, trying to do everything in my power to get drivers to stop on their first pass by, rather than their tenth. It worked!
-
Pricing
Farmers who don’t carefully consider their pricing structures end up leaving a lot of money on the table. Our main product was a $30 bouquet, so we did everything to channel people towards this purchase. We tried to always have a $50 bouquet for sale in order to anchor the $30 option and make it look cheaper, and we rarely sold flowers by the bunch, which led to more sales of the signature product.
-
Margins
I marked our flowers up 3X from a wholesale to florist price, almost without exception. In this way I knew that I was always getting that specific gross margin. Though the farm stand was not free to run (I paid $500/month to rent it), the huge margins more than made up for the expenses. When I bought in flowers from other farms to resell (about 10% of the flowers at the stand) I did the same thing.
-
Design Skills
We didn’t skimp on design. I made sure that my bouquets were the most beautiful, unique ones around, with elevated color schemes that more resembled wedding flowers than supermarket ones. More importantly, my finely-honed design skills allowed me to maximize space and form in my bouquets, making them full and special in spite of being small.
-
Speed & Efficiency
We made and wrapped bouquets in about 30 seconds (though if we were designing in small batches, setting up the work area each day added a fair amount of time to that. If we designed just 2-3 times a week, we were more efficient.
-
Location, Location, Location.
If you’re in an exceptional local with lots of the right kind of traffic, you might not need a huge audience to start with. If you’ve got a huge audience, you don’t need to be in a good location. We played with these factors and were really insistent in building the stand in the most choice location we could imagine.
-
Careful Tracking
I dialed in and refined my checkout process over the years, eventually settling on a clipboard that asked for just enough information for me to learn about customer behavior (and collect email addresses), but not too much to dissuade the busy passerby. By knowing what people were buying and whether they had shopped there before, I could fine tune my offerings.
-
Fine-Tuning
And fine-tune I did! Each year the stand got more dialed in. I could predict what sales would be (except for that six-month road closure, yikes), and make little improvements all the time.
-
Consistency
We chose to be open 24/7 (rather, dawn to dusk for safety), and aimed to always have the stand stocked. I knew that once people got used to knowing they’d always find great flowers there, I couldn’t let them down or traffic would slow, they would call me (boo, grouch over here!) or perhaps shop elsewhere. I was religious about it.