A Community and Forum For Aquaponic Gardeners

Our farms continuing evolution in sales

Coastview Aquaponics began selling produce to friends and neighbores over a year and a half ago. At that time our first system was small but rapidly expanding. We had such great responce to our produce we decided to build another system so we could grow more and sell more. Once our commercial system was up and running we had a problem of having more produce than we could sell out of our home at the time. We joined a local farmers market, started haveng 3 farm sale days, and we got an account at a local health food store.

The farmers market was a new one and did not have very good attendance. Getting ready for the market took a lot of time to prep, load up, sell, and break down. In the end it took ALL day for a 4 hour market which we didn't sell out regularly, so we were not sad when the market ended for good.

Our farm sale/tour days worked well for us. We send out weekly emails informing our customers what we have for sale. We were open Tue and Thur afternoons 4:00-6:00 And Sat 9:00-12:00. The week day afternoon sales were great and our customers very appreciative that they could come and get the freshest produce from just around the corner. We preform tours and sales Saturdays as well and it can get quite busy on this day. Lots of times families come and their kids play with our daughter while their parents spend time touring and talking story. After a while the Tue and Thur sales became a little bit of a burden as we had to make it home by 4:00 on those days.

The health food store was able to sell a fair amount of living lettuce for us at times. We would prepare it and deliver to them on their demand. They usually wanted to stock up before the weekend. The produce manager did not work the weekend and others were in charge of the section. There was little attention payed to the produce and they had a hard time keeping a living plant alive in their display through the weekend. By Monday lots of the lettuce looked so poor that it would not sell. They would then want a credit! We could keep living lettuce in our refrigerator for more than 3 weeks with little loss of quality. We also had a hard time getting payed from them. We could typically grow the lettuce in less time than it took to get payed.

After trying all these different approaches we decided that it was far easier for us to let customers come to us to buy produce. We are able to sell direct to them for less than the stores charge and we get a better price than stores pay. A win-win situation for all by cutting out the middle man. Some of our regular customers complained of having a hard time getting here during our farm sale times so we began looking for another way to serve them and make life easier for us. What we come up with is our honor farm refrigerator.

We now sell produce every day of the week out of an honor farm refrigerator located at the top corner of our garage. We stock it daily with the best of what we have on that day. This allows customers to come at their convenience instead of ours. We can make up special orders for customers and leave them marked with their name. We have now eliminated our Tue-Thur farm sales/tours but still do a Saturday sale/tour day. This method has turned out to be the easiest and most profitable way for us to sell and we are now selling 100% of our produce to the neighborhood. The fridge has been so popular that we will soon upgrade to a larger one to have the ability to stock more variety inside.

This has proved to be a great way to sell produce and has potential for farms of all sizes. We let customers come to us and they give us cash without having to be here to deal with them. I would like to see more farms out there providing this kind of service to their immediate community and help keep the food miles as low as possible.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on August 23, 2011 at 11:08am

Thank you for the updates and information about what has worked well for you and WHY. This is very useful information.

Permalink Reply by Pices on August 23, 2011 at 11:34am

I love the on-farm honor refrigerator concept! What type of facility do you use to collect the money? Is it just an open can; a locked box with a drop slot; etc.?

Permalink Reply by Chris Smith on August 23, 2011 at 11:48am

We keep a small change container in the ice box so customers can make change and leave the cash in ice. We live in a good neighborhood and have not had any problems with theft. We remove cash during the day so there is less temptation and less impact if we do have a problem.

Permalink Reply by Rob Nash on August 23, 2011 at 5:37pm

Thanks Chris, we are dialing in our marketing as well and are just about to go to the farmers market for the first time ever. In Austin Tx we have incredible attendance at the markets with 3000+ folks at each of the two big ones in town. I hope to offer our tilapia fillets as well as lettuce, tomatoes and herbs. have you had any luck selling your fish? I have found that everyone wants fillets. and any whole or live market you can find is so cheap, its not profitable.

thanks again for the post. great idea.

Rob Nash

Austin Aquaponics

Permalink Reply by Chris Smith on August 24, 2011 at 12:56am

Rod,I am jealous of you having a large market in your area. I live on an island that has a limited population, but that is one of the reasons why I moved here. With a larger local market I could do a lot better than I am now. It is always best to sell direct to the consumer direct. Farmers markets are a lot of work though, even if they are truly local. That is why I made this posting. It is MUCH easier for you to build up clients in you immediate area and have them come to you, at their convenience, and then leave you cash. I built up my clientele by word of mouth and farm tours where I explained the benefits of aquaponics. Many people who come to a farm tours become regular customers. I define regulars as a client that comes consistently twice or more a month. Many of our regulars come consistently on a weekly basis.

I sell 95+% of my fish for system start ups. I have a breading operation and cannot keep up with demand for fish in my area. I do sell a few of the larger fish for consumption but the sales for them is slow. Many years ago the state of Hawaii introduced tilapia in all polluted and brackish streams and ponds to help "clean them up". Since then tilapia have a bad stigma as being a mud fish that is not desirable to eat. I am now hedging the tilapia growing with koi. A large koi(even with poor colors) is worth more than a large tilapia for consumption. I am growing them in the same tank with the same food and their growth is comparable.

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on August 24, 2011 at 7:04am

Are there any other edible fresh water fish in HI?

Permalink Reply by Pices on August 24, 2011 at 11:49am

Hi Rob. What food safety regulations do you have to satisify to sell fillets, or are farmers markets exempt? Each state seems to have their own set of requirements. For instance, here in NC I could legally butcher and clean chickens for sale direct to customers, but could not do sheep, goat, or beef. I am also able to legally sell whole fish but not fillets. At this point (I am still constructing my AP system) I don't know if the fillet is a question of a certified commercial kitchen or if they would require USDA inspection.

Rob Nash said:

Thanks Chris, we are dialing in our marketing as well and are just about to go to the farmers market for the first time ever. In Austin Tx we have incredible attendance at the markets with 3000+ folks at each of the two big ones in town. I hope to offer our tilapia fillets as well as lettuce, tomatoes and herbs. have you had any luck selling your fish? I have found that everyone wants fillets. and any whole or live market you can find is so cheap, its not profitable.

thanks again for the post. great idea.

Rob Nash

Austin Aquaponics

Permalink Reply by Chris Smith on August 24, 2011 at 2:24pm

There are two varieties of catfish that know of on island, but I cannot find trout,or bass.

TCLynx said:

Are there any other edible fresh water fish in HI?

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on August 24, 2011 at 4:20pm

What about something like bream or bluegill?

Permalink Reply by Chris Smith on August 25, 2011 at 9:27am

I have not seen bream here but have heard of blue gill in lakes and ponds on Oahu. I am liking the koi much better than the tilapia since they are friendly fish. I am not eating tilapia so growing a friendly fish is just more fun. I am a little picky about the fish I eat. I live in one of the premiere salt water fishing areas in the world. I can out and catch ahi, mahi-mahi, or ono, on most any day. If I lived away from the coast I would put more focus on edible fish in the system and likely eat my tilapia.

Permalink Reply by TCLynx on August 25, 2011 at 7:36pm

Permalink Reply by Rob Nash on August 26, 2011 at 6:12am

Rob. What food safety regulations do you have to satisfy to sell fillets, or are farmers markets exempt?

in Austin we have to allow the health department to inspect a commercial kitchen. The markets have plain clothes inspectors looking for the permits. I plan to build out a trailer to make it a mobile processing room/taco truck. the regulations the same, might as well build it to serve dual purposes. This would allow me to fillet on site and sell a value added product.

this will be a first for me, but feel its the only way to get the top dollar needed to be profitable with such limited offerings. I will keep you posted on the progress.