Value-added products

Here are some comments we heard about value-added products at farmers’ markets:

• Garlic sells for $1 a bunch, but sell it with dried herb flowers and two cayenne peppers and it sells for $10 a bunch!
• Make your product attractive! Dress up your product by tying it with ribbon, or bundling different items together! If you are selling items in jars, cover the lid with a small circle of fabric, etc.
• Value-added is little more work out on the farm but gets premium prices. A few years ago you could bring sunflowers and sell them, but now they have to be put in with other flowers in an arrangement. You can’t just bring things, put them on the table and expect them to sell. It takes a better job of presentation.
• The market for dehydrated vegetables is really taking off! The ‘country kitchen’ look is really in. The key is to use down-home, pretty packaging.
• Items for fast preparation. People are uneducated in cooking and in prepping food or produce.
• Value-added takes us away from the concept of fresh and direct! We have to differentiate as much as possible from grocery stores.

Here are some of the many value-added items growers are selling in farmers’ markets:

• Baby food (organic)
• Bakery items, including bread, cookies, scones, fruit cobblers, apple dumplings, fruit pies
• Baskets, including fruit baskets
• Canned items, including roasted garlic, vegetables
• Corn shocks
• Crafts
• Dog biscuits (vegetarian)
• Dried fruit, including exotic dried fruit like dried persimmons, fruit squares
• Dried vegetables, including tomatoes
• Flowers, including cut flower arrangements, dried flowers
• Garlic braids
• Gourds
• Greenhouse items
• Herbal products, including braids, crafts, lotions, balms, soaps, oils, teas, bath herbs, dried herbs, lip gloss, salve, massage oils
• Hickory chips
• Honey, including flavored
• Jams, jellies and preserves, including low- or no-sugar, cactus apple, fig jam jelly, pomegranate jelly, rhubarb preserves
• Juices, including fresh, exotic juices like pomegranate
• Lettuce, mixed 6-pack as veggie starts
• Marinated fruits and vegetables and syrups (wild cherry)
• Molasses
• Nursery stock
• Nuts, salted and flavored
• Oil, including jojoba, olive, organic
• Pastas
• Pepper braids
• Pesto, all kinds
• Pickled vegetables
• Popcorn
• Posole (corn soaked in lime and dried) from colored corn
• Potpourri
• Prepared foods, including bagels, pizza relish, onion rhubarb salsa, including tomato, salsa verde mix with tomatilloes, onion, garlic, chilies, cilantro
• Soaps, generally handmade
• Spices
• Squirrel corn (field corn put in packages with a feeder stand)
• Vinegar, including gourmet, with fancy labeling and special ingredients like meyer lemons, habanero peppers, berries or edible flowers.

©  New World Publishing. Reprinted from "The New Farmers' Market," New World Publishing. All Rights Reserved, except with written permission from New World Publishing; 11543 Quartz Dr. #1, Auburn CA 95602. Source: www.nwpub.net

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