Why Selling Produce At A Local Garden Shop Can Be A Win-Win [Opinion]
March 18, 2016 
The past several years, garden stores are getting into the fresh produce business, a trend that farm marketers can see as a rivalry or a great opportunity.
Garden retailers across the country are responding to their customers’ increased interest in locally-grown produce. The most common response so far has been to sell plants for consumers to grow at home. They buys from some of the same companies you do, like Sakata, Syngenta, and Burpee, although they are buying from their ornamental departments.
But a growing trend is to sell fresh produce, not just vegetable and fruit plants and trees for home harvesting. And from what I’ve seen, this offers more traditional farms a great opportunity to expand their reach — and their profit.
Winter Farmers’ Markets
Many garden centers want to stay open year round. But traffic flow in the winter months is very low. Their inventory is as its lowest level. So some garden retailers looked at the empty retail greenhouses (and parking lots) and decided to find other uses for the space during winter.
Gail and Vic Vanik own Four Seasons Greenhouses in Delores, CO, a sparsely populated area not too farm from the Four Corners region. Vic, who heads up the growing division, began talking to other greenhouse growers in the area and learned that their state grants expected them to produce food year round, but most local farmers’ markets shut down in winter. So Four Seasons Market was born.
Space is rented to growers for a minimal fee, just enough to cover advertising and marketing costs. The growers have an outlet they didn’t have before, and the Vaniks get the benefit of more foot traffic to their store as well as selling their own vegetables. Customers coming in for a stone oven pizza (which one vendor has attached to her truck) occasionally pick up pottery and other garden inventory. Everyone benefits.
The Vaniks coordinate with the main farmers market in the area so they don’t put their growers in the awkward position of having to pick one over the other.
If you have a winter crop, you and your regional peers should consider approaching a locally owned garden store about staring an off season. Both sides should have a voice in how the relationship should work so that growers and the host garden retailer improve their businesses side by side.
A More Traditional Outdoors Farmers’ Markets With Only Local Farms
Ooltewah Nursery in Ooltewah, TN, began hosting a farmers’ market at their garden center a few years ago. Owners Gina and Wendell Whitener and their Marketing Director Angel Miller knew they wanted to venture into fresh produce and began talking with local growers to see what might work best for them. They quickly learned that the growers were deeply unhappy with several of the local farmers’ markets. Some didn’t like that the markets allowed in vendors from hundreds of miles away. Others were unhappy with the costs involved with getting a stand.
The Ooltewah team decided to open a farmers’ market in the open area behind their store, using the growers’ advice to craft the rules. Like Four Seasons, Ooltewah’s farmers’ market fees were designed to cover costs and not necessarily make a profit. Like many garden centers, Ooltewah was looking for a way to have customers come to the store several times over a season.
Garden centers are a lot like churches when it comes to attendance/customer traffic. While they many are open year-round, most of their traffic and sales are in the spring. Many people shop in spring, then disappear, similar to those who attend church only on the big holidays.
Food, however, brings customers in much more often. And since it is the main garden center in its area, Ooltewah attracts more customers than most of the farms would be able to draw.
Supplying Produce For Garden Stores’ Produce Departments
Some garden shops have opened produce sales areas, staffed by the garden retailer and the fruits and vegetables purchased they way they purchase their plants and other inventory.
Flamingo Road Nursery in Fort Lauderdale, FL, and Wingard’s Market in Lexington, SC, are two good examples of traditional garden retailers who have opened a market.
At Flamingo Road, owner Jim Dezell has a building and parking lot that are dedicated to his farmers market. Most of the produce is stocked and cared for by his staff, although he has a few vendors who sell on consignment and man their own stations. These vendors tend to be gregarious people who pull customers in and teach them about their product, like a bee keeper who enthusiastically hands out samples.
All sales go through Flamingo Road’s POS system, and a central check out area in the farmers market.
Likewise, Wingard’s has a produce division that can is handled through it’s main POS inventory system. It brings in local eggs, pork, seafood from the Carolina coast, along with a wide range of fresh produce. Again, Wingard’s staff handles the sales and restocking. However, farmers have had the chance to interact with customers at a couple of farm-to-table dinners Wingard’s has hosted.
This model is less work for the farmer, but he also cedes more control to the garden retailer, who negotiates a wholesale price that will take spoilage, labor and other overhead costs into account.
Setting Up A Farm Stand On A Garden Retail Site
Urban Growers Greenhouses and J&J Produce recently announced they were merging. J&J Produce had operated a popular farm stand for years near the garden grower/retailer. By bringing the farm stand into the garden store, both businesses benefit. J&J Produce has a more established setting to sell their produce and can extend their season. Urban Growers Greenhouses gets more repeat business, and both businesses enjoy having the others’ customers stopping in to buy their produce or plants.