Price Conversations

​One difficult issue farmers face with their products is the size of the item they want to sell.  We planted loads of lettuce heads in our hoop houses in March and April.  Lettuce can take about 60+ days to form a full beautiful head, so we were planning to have lettuce heads from late April through June.  Lettuce is really happy between 50-75 degrees and when it’s hotter, they often send up flower stalks (bolt) and turn bitter.  The last two weeks have been unusually warm for Michigan this time of year.  It has been sunny and 80 degrees outside, but that means it is over 100 degrees in our hoop houses.  Thus our lettuce has not been very happy.

In a scramble to not loose these heads and have to feed them to the chickens, we have been harvesting lettuce not only based on size, but also on whether it looks like it is about to bolt.  So we have heads from the size of a softball to others the size of a beach ball!  Pricing these heads and selling them has been a head scratcher, but this week I have had LOTS of conversations with my wholesale accounts and managed to develop a strategy to sell them all.  HURRAY!

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Ok here’s what I figured out:

1. Large grocery store chain – They have a computer system set up to buy and sell our lettuce by the head.  So we sell them based on the total number of heads and that means we need the heads to be consistently the same size and in standard size quantities (6 heads per crate).  Therefore, if we only have 5 green leaf heads of the same size, we cannot sell that partial crate to them. 
2. Local grocery store – We delivered our first batch of lettuce on Thursday and charged based on a head count.  The buyer was open to receiving future lettuce of varying sizes if we could reflect the size variations in our price per head.  He mentioned that he was selling our heads by the pound because the red leaf lettuce wasn’t a large as the green leaf or Bibb lettuce.  I had already figured out a per pound price before I called and we were able to negotiate a per pound price for future deliveries.  We were both very happy with the final pricing.  He also mentioned that if he could receive various types of lettuce it made his displays more beautiful and he would sell a lot more lettuce.  That works out fantastic for us because he gave us the freedom to choose 100 lettuce heads of any kind.  It works out great for him because he can continue to charge per pound and his lettuce display will be beautifully full of color and texture.
3. Local restaurant – I spoke to one of the chefs about how he was going to use the lettuce and found out it was going to be used for salad.  I suggested a discounted price if he would buy our tiny softball heads by the pound since he was going to chop them up anyway.  And I mentioned I could include multiple varieties so his salad mix would be colorful.  He loved the idea. My tiny heads have a home too!
4. Farmers Market – This is the easiest place to sell random size produce of any kind.  Our farmers’ market customers are great at buying big and small items.  They see our fresh gorgeous produce and don’t hesitate. We are thankful they are so flexible and more interested in the flavor, not the size. 

 
This week was a great reminder that having a conversation with my customers about price can be a win-win for my farm and my customers.

​Recommended Reading:  It is garden planting time and the New Kitchen Garden book by Adam Caplin is full of beautiful photos, garden planning tools and tips and great seasonal recipes.

​Did you know up to 75% of some farm products are wasted because the crop does not conform to a standard size or perfect appearance?  For example, a Striped German heirloom tomato can weigh between 0.5 to 3 pounds!