When deciding to take the leap from flower farming being a hobby into a business there are some fairly basic sales outlets to look at, and farmer’s market is definitely one of the main ones.

Personally, I also feel it is a right of passage. It will challenge and reward you, boost your confidence and also humble you.

An important process for any entrepreneur, but even more so for the new flower farmer. One of the biggest things my husband and I talk about is the deadliness of living in that “5%” in the beginning of starting a business. You go from thinking you know nothing to thinking you know everything fairly quickly. That 5% is where you think you know it all but in reality you only know about… 5%. Being a vendor at farmer’s market for those willing to embrace failures, learn lessons and have an open mind will quickly get you out of that 5% zone. It will grow you as a business owner, a farmer, a salesman and in general a person. You will gain experience and knowledge, but all along discovering more questions than answers, you will start think you know nothing. That is when you will officially be on your way to being a successful flower farming business.

If your wondering what i’m referring to check out this link Dunning–Kruger effect

Our Experience

We were vendors at a beautiful Saturday morning farmer’s market for three seasons in a nearby town about thirty minutes away. It was a lot of work and hustle for our little family. It was also filled with great memories, smiles and hard (but amazing) lessons.

I would not necessarily label farmer’s market our most profitable outlet from a monetary perspective. In fact, when I ran the numbers it was our least profitable outlet, despite having great sales. It was rather time consuming and costly for us to attend. By the end of the third season we were needing to take two vehicles to be able to bring enough flowers. Now, farmer’s market not being our most profitable is comparing it to our events, custom orders and current success of our bouquet subscription. In the first couple years, Farmer’s Market financially fueled Sierra Flower Farm as our main outlet. We didn’t have enough bouquet subscriptions or other custom orders to finance our growing business. Each week, that handful of cash allowed us to reinvest to keep growing.

Your perspective of what sales outlet is profitable or not, will change as your business grows.

Ultimately though, it wasn’t the cash that was the most valuable during those three years. We actually had a few things we deemed much more valuable, which is why I think at least participating in a few Farmer’s Market in the beginning is a right of passage and beneficial to a new flower farmer.

Exposure

You’ll hear it time and time again: farmer’s market is good exposure, even if you don’t make tons of money. It is, especially if it is a well established and reputable market. At least for us, our connection to the particular farmer’s market that we were vendors at was huge.

A lot of the customers were the “farmer’s market’s customers” but over time a lot of those same customers have now become subscription members for us. Even though they didn’t automatically translate to being bouquet members (and why would they when they could see us at market!). After a season of not being vendors, those customers remembered us, missed us and continue to support us. We created some strong and fantastic relationships with more people than we even realized there! Even though we were always welcoming and gave our best selves to the customers at market, we can’t really take the credit for our success from the market.

It was truly our market manager who really helped us navigate being a flower vendor at the market, she is a big part of our little success story. She is also a big inspiration behind why I like to share any knowledge I have to offer.

Our market manager took us under her wing. She invited us to be flower vendors at her market, which is rated one of the top ten in the nation (be impressed!). We never thought we would be able to be vendors at this particular market, they had their flower farmer vendor and we were told by other grower friends that we greatly respect that the market manager was very loyal to this grower. I definitely wasn’t looking to step on the toes of an established flower farmer! It just so happened, this flower vendor had just retired. In late April, a couple months before the first farmer’s market, the market manager coordinated a meeting for us with the retiring flower farmer. Those couple hours were filled with so much advice, wisdom and delicious sandwiches. We were connected with other people to help us navigate getting the proper certifications to sell our cut flowers. She basically gave us the play book of the “how-to” and put us in contact with the appropriate people to help us with each hoop to jump through in the process. Once market began, she always came in and checked on us. She also critiqued each one of our bouquets, which was a hard pill to swallow sometimes but ultimately I think helped us to choose and cultivate a high quality product. Which flowers were best suited for farmer market bouquets? (don’t worry, we’ll give you a list at the end!).

Our market manager was also a huge player behind the scenes in ways we didn’t even know. She helped us get highlighted in a local foodie magazine and featured our name in the local newspapers. I have found out later, there were times she did this and we were absolutely clueless (since it wasn’t our local newspaper!), until someone made mention.

So yes, there is some exposure to be had standing at a booth but making the “right” connections, building relationships with the community while selling a quality product all builds upon that. Our market manager has a strong, wonderful reputation and she still puts her name behind us on a consistent basis.

While at market, you need to have business cards on hand. Build brand recognition. Have a sign or banner that proudly displays your logo. Stamp, sticker and tag every product that leaves your booth. Make sure it is visible. We chose to stamp our logo on the upper back portion of our bouquets for a reason, when people walk around with their flowers our brand is highly visible. We also always had an email sign up list out if they chose to join. That way we could better stay connected to them (which in 2020 was absolutely huge for us!). We would have people stop to take photos and we always made sure to put our instagram handle somewhere visible to get them to tag us. These are little things that add up! You want them to remember you once they leave market. A big part has always been our blog, we funnel them to our website and then keep them there with our blogs.

What product should I bring?

The ever common question: what products are best in a farmer’s market setting? Mixed bouquets? Straight bunches of single varieties? Mason jar arrangements? More elaborate arrangements? Make your own bouquet? Then finally, the dreaded how many?

I will start with a hard reality, every market is different!

With that said, here is what we have found to work best for us! Hint: it’s a little bit of a combination. Our market was Saturday morning where many of our customers were heading to weddings, birthday parties or other celebrations in general. Bringing fresh flowers to their host was a common request (along with buying some for themselves too, because pretty flowers!). Aside from being a Saturday market here are some other details about that particular market:

We were vendors at a full, fast paced market. Also, the customers at this farmer’s market had been trained for about ten years by a previous flower farmer in expectations of product, price and speed. It took a little re-training and re-education on the price point. In time, we found our voice, our style and what worked best for us and our customers alike. Unfortunately, we were micro growers and couldn’t sell our flowers as cheaply as the previous flower farmer. It came down to providing an experience and packaging! What we did keep was being friendly.

We experimented with make-your-own bouquets and also watched other competing vendors try it out. Once again, we were in a fast paced market. Building your own was a little overwhelming for our market customers and ultimately relied on us to put it together, depending on our “expertise.” The last thing we want is for customers to get frustrated, we want them to have a positive lasting experience. At our market, a build-your-own model was a no go. This doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t use or add a specific flower for our customers or even put together a custom order on the spot, for the most part though our pre-assembled products did best.

If you are familiar with marketing then you are familiar with customers liking options. Not too many options, that’s overwhelming (goes back to the why the build-your-own didn’t work in this setting). Think In N’ Out burger more than Jack in the Box.

A few simple options.

I have seen other flower farmers have a menu of options so long you could only get halfway through it before just going for the easiest option (or the cheapest). Once again, we don’t want our customers overwhelmed or frustrated. The process needs to be as effortless as possible.

Here’s what we offered:

Core Products:

Large (market) bouquet- $19

Petite Bouquet- $8

Small Mason jar arrangement- $12

Signature Arrangement (at a discounted price from online price of at that time $45)- $38

Number of items we brought

Before market I aimed to have a minimum of twenty large market bouquets assembled and about twenty petite bouquets made up. I always brought extra stems of components with me to market, which I will get into more in a bit as to why. I then would put together arrangements at market when I had down time or custom requests. Back then my girls were toddlers so it was a miracle having that many bouquets made! The petite bouquets were a way for me to use up some shorter stems.

The power of novelty offerings

Also, changing throughout the season, we always had something “novelty.”

Early in the market season this would be sweet pea bunches or ranunculus bunches with a sprig of seeded cress with prices varying between $9-13. In summer it would be sunflower bunches with amaranth, gladiolus or tiny viola posies. Late summer we even brought giant dinner plate dahlias and sold them by the stem for $3 each, they sold out in under 20 minutes! Customers did not care that the dinner plate dahlias didn’t have the longest vase life, they thought it was just a blast to carry this giant flower all around market, take selfies and it was quite the conversation starter! Novelty items are fun and we would have customers that couldn’t resist having those certain flowers who would not normally buy from us! The novelty offering would also commonly be an add-on to our loyal customer’s usual purchase. It was like having an impulse item by the check out at the grocery store. Plus it kept it interesting for our customers, they’d have to check and see what we had! The novelty items would sell out usually within the first half hour to hour of market so it also drove customers to come visit us first, it’s a sad day when you miss out on those sweet peas!

Value-added items for the win!

We also sold added-value items at our booth. By our last season at market, this wasn’t needed as much but those first couple years they helped! Graham is not only our flower farmer and booth set up guy, he is also a wood turner. We would have his bowls set out on the booth, pulling more out to fill those empty looking spaces as the flowers sold. This was a win-win, Graham sold some bowls but it also engaged men customers who weren’t super keen being dragged into the flower booth. They were great conversation starters and made our booth look full even if we sold out of flowers early… we still had sales potential! I also would bring dried flower wreaths, lavender was always a winner! We would have hand-crafted cards made using our pressed flowers, even pumpkins in early fall get creative if you need to fill that space! You are there, make the most out of your time possible and snag those sales! Just be sure to clear it with your market manager first.

I think on our best day we brought in close to $1,000 (which included flowers, bowls, seedlings and a custom bulk bucket order), averaged about $400 and our worst day $56… that was a rough day.

To pre-sleeve or not to pre-sleeve bouquets?

I am team not to pre-sleeve bouquets at market.

We have tried it both ways and found the flowers sales went up when I didn’t sleeve the bouquets ahead of time. The sleeves dip in the water which looks sloppy, the bouquet’s “sleeved” look smaller than they actually are, the customers can’t fully see what they are purchasing (they love to choose the bouquet “speaking to them”) and also, there is something magical about having your flowers wrapped up right in front of your eyes.

I think in a society where everything is pre-wrapped in plastic and cardboard boxes, it is nostalgic to have your purchase wrapped up to order.

We would pre cut the paper, have it folded and stamped ahead of time but from there did everything on the spot. Also, do not negate the power of cuteness of some twine! That last little touch always made the customer feel so special, twine is an amazing secret tool!

To wrap up market bouquets I would have the following:

Kraft painter paper (lightweight, 18” for large and 12” for small); folded into a triangle and pre-stamped with logo

White tissue paper

Twine

Paper towels (to dampen with water)

Plastic bag (we used compostable doggie-poo bags, our way to go less plastic)

Rubber bands

Stapler + staples

A dunking bucket (for the paper towels)

I would keep a small bucket of water next to me to dip the paper towel wrapped bouquet in. It also worked as a holding place for the next bouquet that needed to be wrapped.

I believe in always having a water source for the flowers. For our subscription, we deliver in jars of water but for market that’s not really feasible. A damp paper towel in a compostable bag is what we use. Then we hid the bag with tissue paper wrapped then in the Kraft sleeve then tied with twine in a bow. Always offer commercial flower food. Yes, even for the tiny bouquets they get wrapped. Show off your logo, ensure you handed over the most completed product and experience. This may take a little more time but this is part of building a relationship with your customers.

A note on jars, we would keep a few on hand to make little arrangements or if a customer needed it. If it came to giving a jar to make a sale we gave the jar. Majority of the time, customers always made it a priority to give them back the next time they saw us (which also brought them back to our booth again, double win!).

Create a welcoming and beautiful space!

A lot of the advice I am about to list isn’t any kind of secret. If you do a quick farmer’s market google search, a good chunk of videos will pop up with this advice. We followed these various tidbits of advice and I will say, I feel it made us stand out for the better!

Leave the chair at home

When you are sitting down in a chair at market, you look unwelcoming. Plain and simple. You look like you don’t really want to be there or to engage. I hear ya, after a long day of harvesting and bouquet making the idea of then standing for five to seven hours sounds torturous. The thing is, once you are at market actively selling, you’re at the home stretch. This is the moment that you had been working towards, don’t give up now!

Stack ‘em high and watch ‘em fly

One of the most cringe-y set ups I see flower farmers do is to line a table with a bunch of mason jars or buckets of flowers, Flat... Few... Uninteresting… The highlight of your booth shouldn’t be the bright plastic table cloth.

I encourage you to look at the vegetable booths at market. Look at the vendors booths who are super crowded versus the ones not as active with customers. The best booths have layer, depth and texture, this all helps to catch people’s eyes.

Can you spy the difference?

Well, one, the less active ones are probably sitting in a chair but secondly, their booth probably looks a little boring and empty.

How do you fix this? How do you fix this when you don’t have a huge amount of flowers (a normal problem for first year flower farmers)?

It comes down to the decor. Risers, buckets, dimension. Even if you don’t have a ton of product, you can still manipulate the space to look more full than it is. Nobody likes to buy the product that looks “left over” instead, make it look like “it’s waiting just for you!”

To create a positive, seamless experience, be sure to display your options and prices clearly.

Some customer have no problem walking right you to you and engaging in conversation all the while making up their minds whether or not they want to buy your product. Most don’t! most people (my self included) want to stand back and size up your product offering in relation to your price and determine for them self before talking to you whether they want your flowers or not. All this said, make sure that your prices are easily visible so that they can make this decision on their own.

We used a vintage ladder where we hung our chalkboard “menu” with our logo sign right underneath, then usually a crate of flowers. If we had extra vines or flowers, we had some fun decorating that ladder up to make it even more eye catching and a cute spot for IG photo ops!

Opinion warning! For Sierra Flower Farm’s brand and color palette we went for neutral. We chose black and white not only because it saves on printing costs and is a rather timeless color scheme but it doesn’t distract from the vibrancy of the flowers. This was a very conscious decision. In our market decor, we followed the same idea. We are fortunate to have great friends whose entire business is decor and staging that decor. One of their greatest pieces of advice was to use canvas drop cloths as table cloths! They are clean, simple, cheap and didn’t distract from the flowers. We bought a cute flower stand for our larger bouquets and used vintage milk crates, galvanized buckets and baskets for additional flowers. Dress up those plain plastic buckets by tucking them in a basket. Think cute. Think eye catching. You want to provide an experience. Having a nice set up is the beginning of that experience that will draw potential customers in.

Pro-tip! If you want to use galvanized buckets, use a silicone sealer to make them waterproof. Also, use plain water! If you did the proper post handling of your flowers, they will be fine in plain water for a few hours. It is not worth a reaction with the metal and flower food that could potentially decrease vase life.

Greet and engage!

If you have ever worked retail or in customer service you know how important greeting is!

Customers want to feel welcomed and wanted.

Being at a farmer’s market can be overwhelming as a customer, especially a larger one. The reality is, most customers are not going to be hitting up every booth. You want to capture their attention. Even if you are engaged in conversation with another customer, always take a second to say hello to the new arrival. This is where having a second person working with you can help! Acknowledgement is so important! Who doesn’t want to be acknowledged? If you see a customer standing just outside your booth, shout out to them with a warm hello or compliment. You are there to make sales, this is not the time to be mousy. Engage in a fun, positive manner with your customers!

Also, while wrapping up those bouquets and taking money don’t sit in silence. Chat it up with small talk, you want to keep them engaged. This allows the time to pass by quicker. This tactic is even more important when you have a line in your booth. Talk it up with your customers, joke, have a great time and they will too!

This is also a great time to be able to talk about your approach on growing, your why’s behind flower farming, future goals, etc. It may seem like a bunch of small talk but what you are doing is building trust between you and your customer. If a customer is extra chatty, this is when I love being able to hand them a business card and direct them to my blog (especially for those passionate gardeners!). It is a way to nicely finish the conversation so you can focus on the next customer but also in a way where you are not leaving them empty handed. Seriously, if you are not blogging- start!

Bring extra components with you!

Earlier I mentioned that I always brought extra buckets of flowers, foliage, etc with me. I did this for a couple reasons:

Added to the space

Having a giant bucket of peonies (tucked into a cute basket to hide the ugly bucket) would draw people in. Especially if you sold a lot of bouquets, it can add to make your space look a little fuller and more whimsical. We even sold buy a large bouquet and get an extra peony stem for free… that went over surprisingly well!

Always look busy

There is a fine line between looking active and approachable or consumed and unwelcoming. Go for the first combination. You should be looking busy in between rushes, fluffing up you display, making arrangements, making additional bouquets. This allows you to be able to have more product to sell, which is especially helpful if market was a little more crazy than usual!

I can’t tell you how many times I sold an arrangement I was actively putting together by a passerby. It wasn’t uncommon for them to start pointing out which flowers to add and then they purchased and walked away so proud with their contribution!

Surprise & Delight

Any of you work at Starbucks back in the day? If you have then you know the power of a surprise & delight!

Now, you should never feel pressured to give anything away or add something more to a bouquet if you don’t want to. If you have extra flowers and you feel compelled to do so, it is such a strong bonding moment. I would keep extra stems of dahlias near by (or insert any other flower) if a customer would make a special mention, I would surprise them and tuck in an extra stem into their bouquet. If someone just looked down, we would call them over and surprise them with a flower. You would think we had made such a grand gesture! Something so simple was so special to them. If a cute kid came toddling into our booth, we would hand them a short stemmed marigold. Something not really usable to us but an absolute treasure to the kid that would buy the parents a few more extra moments to shop at market. There have been times young girls have come up saying they want to grow up to be like me (what?! Who the heck am I?!) Well they needed some flowers to take home and play with! Who knows how much that will mean to them and play into whether they will too become flower farmers? It makes you feel good, gives a home to some flowers that would otherwise end up in compost and adds to that experience. I do feel this was a big part of creating a lasting impression with our customers, not that they were seeking for anything for free which is what makes it even better!

Choosing varieties for Market

This is always the decision, what flowers are appropriate for market? I mean the short answer is whatever you have extra! If you are growing specific for market (or mixed bouquets in general) I will give a more refined answer. This goes back to our blog: Importance of deciding on final product before crop planning.

Market bouquets are “kitchen table” florals.

When selecting varieties for market bouquets, you will be looking at vase life and stem length. This is a slightly different approach than if you are growing event flowers. Not that the two can’t ever cross, because they do, but your priority may look slightly different.

Cosmos and zinnias are great to incorporate into market bouquets but you do need to lace some other fun flowers in it too, because you don’t want to have to compete with the vegetable vendors selling big bunches of zinnias for $3 while you’re trying to sell yours for $15.

Yes, you are at farmer’s market but you are also a specialty cut flower grower. You should be bringing some fun, unusual and unique flowers! With this though, you also need to realize you’re not going to get an incredibly high price per stem point. There is only so much a farmer’s market can bare price wise. So skip the pon-pon ranunculus in the bouquets and go for the less expensive generic varieties of ranunculus. Save the pricier varieties for event work or to sell to event florists.

Circling back to vase life, in a mixed bouquet it comes to layering in varieties that have differing vase lives. As cut flower growers we understand that different flowers have different vase lives, ranunculus last forever and cosmos not so much. This has nothing to do with the quality of your product, just the nature of the variety. Sadly, many customers have been trained to expect a vase life of a minimum week if not two weeks! They will judge your product based on this. If their entire bouquet dies within a few days… they probably won’t be coming back to you.

Here are some basics to get you started:

Add in everlastings: such as strawflower, gomphrena, statice.

Choose foliage wisely: dusty miller, seeded orach/cress, scented geraniums, mints, apple of Peru and make sure they are at the proper maturity to use as foliage!

Place flowers in different phases: some open to give instant gratification, some unopened. This will allow the customers to watch the song and dance of fresh flowers living and then dying.

If you’re going to use dahlias- go for the ball varieties to get the best vase life!

Here are some of the winners that our market customers love!

Some other tips

Bring lots of water!

A big “camping” like one for the flowers and an ice chest full for yourself. Hydrate, hydrate and eat! Market hangover is a thing, mainly from dehydration, take care of yourself to lessen it.

To help you out, here’s a checklist of what we packed up for farmer’s market in totes each week!

Farmer's Market Supply Checklist

Smile, just smile.

Look happy like you’re living the dream, because from many of the customer perspectives you are!

Be fairly consistent

Especially if you are attending for exposure more than just quickly offloading some extra product. Repetition is key, it will help you build a customer base and build trust in you.

Don’t be afraid to ask your market manager questions or other vendors!

On that note, make friends and trades with other vendors, get your veggies for the week! It was etiquette at our market to give discounts to fellow vendors… that took a second for me to figure out…but when we did Graham got some amazing massages trading bouquets! Truly… There was a massage therapist and she was incredible!

Reach out to your local department of agriculture

To ensure you are taking all the proper steps to be able to sell your cut flowers legally, your market manager should also help you with this.

Take cash and card!

We are not a society that is heavy on cash these days, we have been very happy with square-reader. Tell them we sent you! We love the chip reader with the contactless option, I think people are using their phones to pay more and more these days! Make it easy and convenient.

We have been happy with Square-reader here’s a referral link if you are interested!

Check to see if you need to charge sales tax, and get that set up! This is going to change state by state, here in Nevada cut flowers are taxable. We work the sales tax into the flat price of our products, once again we are aiming for ease and convenience! Also, don’t forget to check in about business licenses (or waivers).

Take Notes

Keep a day calendar with you and take notes! I kept notes about the foot traffic of market, if there were other big events happening in town, what I brought and our sales. I was able to find a trend and then select the more worth-while weekends to attend in the later years. For us, I noticed the pattern was we did best the first few weekends of market in June and then Mid to late august through mid September. My suspicion based on some feedback was that customers had a garden in full bloom during the summer months and lots of vacations!

Have fun!

There truly is a wonderful uplifting energy at market, the smell of food cooking, community and music playing in the background. And there’s not judgement for eating chips and dip as breakfast at 8 in the morning!

Customers don’t go to market because they “have to” they go to market because they “want to.” It truly is a cup filling kind of day after hours and days prepping for market.

Farmer’s Market with kids

There will family memories created with kids in tow!

Our girls grew up during those three years at market. They went from filling their socks with dirt (for hours!) to making bouquets to “sell” (really give) to customers. I credit our time at market for helping our daughter overcome her shyness and speech difficulties. After a long, hot day at market we would skip on over across the street for ice cream cones and run through the splash pad before they passed out on the way home. It was a wonderful time for our little family! A lot of work but a lot of fun too!

If you are bringing kids to work at market with you little tables, special games, coloring books, etc that are only for market help! We even bought foam pads for camping if they needed a nap under the table, having movies on tablets downloaded and tons of snacks. Those early years was a lot of balancing but as they became older, it got much easier and they were proud to “work” at the farmer’s market!

We always brought extra flowers, even the “rejects.” Something we wouldn't sell but were absolute treasures to children and allowed our girls to play flower farmer at market too where they would “sell” (AKA give away) their creations.

Dealing with competition

Whether you are coming into a market with an established flower grower or you find yourself as the established flower vendor and dealing with incoming competition here is a piece of advice to help you through it:

Focus on your product, your customers service and know that the other flower vendors are not your competition, you are truly in competition with yourself.

Outdo and out perform yourself and provide a beautiful product and experience for your customers.

If you do this “competing vendors” will be no competition at all and this is where community over competition can be born.

Wow! That was so much information thrown at you! I guess about three seasons of core lessons thrown at you to be exact.

Farmer’s Market is a right of passage and it is the school of hard knocks! You will learn a ton about yourself, your growing, your sales, how to think and answer quick on your feet, multi task and more! It is also flexible, great for some last minute sales and a wonderful way to get your name out in the community. Whether being a vendor at Farmer’s Market is your main goal to have as a sales outlet or a stepping stone, every new flower farmer should try it a couple times!

Happy flower farming!

Flower Farming Business: Farmer’s Market