Still no takers! I took some advice and slashed the prices of the bouquets and made some "Bath Teas" and potpourri. I set up about 8am. My neighbor decided to park his truck right in the line of sight to the main road (even though his driveway was empty) so I made a little cardboard sign pointing my way. Overall a great productive day but no sales for the fsa loan application.
Luckily nothing goes to waste! Bonus reishi(?) Mushrooms i found growing in the food forest. I have hundreds of roses hung up and drying now.
Happy mothers day!
Original post https://www.reddit.com/r/homestead/s/P07Y2L3rZg
by stepwn
6 Comments
I think different packaging will help. Bags or jars where you can see the tea/products.
How much traffic are you gettin? Did anyone stop at your stand and then decide not buy? Or are ppl just not stopping at all? What is the area like where you are set up?
Signage is important. Drivers in cars only have a split second to decide to pull over unless you have lots of bold easy to read signs spaced out leading up to your stand.
It takes time and consistency to develop regular customers for road stands. My friend who has a success flower business has been at it for years but ppl know his stand now as it has fresh bouquets out every day.
To make a farmstand profitable it should be set it up as a weatherproof self serve stand with cash box and Venmo (and cameras if needed).
I think putting them in closed mesh bags (so you can steep the bath tea and easily dish it out) would help. Loose oats in the bath sound like enough of a clean up that I wouldn’t want to purchase.
I’m a bit confused about what you expect to happen. You simply are not going to make a homestead “economically viable” with just a farm stand selling roses…
Are you advertising on Facebook marketplace, local groups, Craigslist, etc?
That’s too much money for a bouquet of pretty meh roses. Make them $5, make them bigger and add in some greenery? It seems like you have a ton of them so ooomf up the bouquets. You can potentially charge $10 but they need much more.
Your other products, put them in big glass jars, label them, get a scoop, clear individual baggies and make those $3/each. People can scoop them out themselves and check them out as a whole, including the smell, which is what I assume is the allure. I’d also have some prefilled bags ready to go with some colorful ribbon or something. Good luck!!