It’s just after dawn on a Saturday and Frank is driving around downtown Austin looking for a car wash. There’s not much going on in a downtown area at dawn, and there are very few car washes. But the lady at the convenience store said she thought he could find one. That was right after she said that she couldn’t give Frank twenty dollars in quarters as change for buying a cup of coffee. Good grief! What were we thinking. This was the second week of the new farmers market in Austin, and we had arrived with no change for the register. “No change! What do you mean no change!” Panic mode! So Frank is driving around looking for a car wash so he can get us some quarters from the change machine. After searching fruitlessly for the car wash, he finally got far enough afield to spot a grocery store, where the friendly night manager sold him some quarters. Frank got back just in time for the market to open and we were on our way.

Once again our business is suffering from a multiple personality disorder. We can’t seem to be content being a big wholesale grower–we keep diving into retail, too. Our latest adventure is the new Austin downtown farmer’s market. We have a double stall there every Saturday morning, and we are learning some valuable lessons. Like bringing enough change!

The downtown Austin market has been a long time in the making. In fact, the original idea of the market 10 years ago is what got us into growing cut flowers in the first place. Austin had a small farmers market, but it was dominated by vendors reselling items like oranges, avocados, and melons. It was hard for local farmers to get a stall there, and traffic flow was low. We were involved with a group of local growers who were brainstorming about starting a grower’s-only downtown market. Austin seemed like a perfect place for such a market. Austin is a vibrant, progressive city with a well educated population. Cities like Madison, Wisconsin, and Boulder, Colorado, had great markets–why not Austin?

We were optimistic about the chances of a downtown market, so we started planting. At the time we grew bedding plants, but we thought we would try cut flowers for the market. We plowed up about a quarter acre and planted our first crop. Then due to a number of factors, political and otherwise, the market never materialized. Our cut flowers did great though, and we went on to fame and fortune!

Now, 10 years later, we finally have a downtown, growers-only market in Austin! Credit goes to a group called the Sustainable Food Center, here in Austin. The SFC is an organization that works to promote better access to local healthy food, to provide opportunities for local farmers to sell their products, and to educate consumers about food, farmers, and the value of eating right. Several years ago, the SFC took up the idea of a downtown market, and through their dogged perseverance, they finally made it happen. The market opened in May at a park right downtown, and it’s been a great success.

When we started in May, we were not really experienced at packing things up and setting up a market in town, but we decided from the git-go that if we were going to do the market, we might as well make a splash. We signed up early, and locked in a double booth right at the corner of the market. Aside from being right by the parking garage, the biggest asset of our space it that it is under some trees. Shade!! (As of right now, the market is on a closed street at the south side of a park. Only one side has trees.) The disadvantage is that we are on the park sidewalk, so we have to unload our truck before the market and park it somewhere else. This has not been a big problem though.

We decided right away that since we are in the business of color, we were going to give the customers color, and lots of it! We had just come back from Oaxaca, Mexico a couple of months earlier, and while we were there, we bought several strands of papel picado, or literally “cut paper”. These are streamers of colorful paper. Each paper is about the size of a place mat, and the papers are hand cut in intricate patterns with fruits and vegetables, birds, flowers and such. The papers are attached on long strings which are then strung across streets and on houses during fiestas and celebrations. They now make them out of plastic too, and we bought several sets while in Mexico, along with lots of other colorful decorations. We use these decorations to brighten up our booth and make it look like a Mexican flower market. It takes more work to set up and shut down, but people love the decorations. Every week we are asked if we could sell them!

We also decided right off that we wanted people to come into our booth, like a real shop, rather than buy flowers from a table at the front of the booth. We set up our wrapping table at one end of the booth, along the side. We are behind that, wrapping bouquets and making change (Taking money!!). On the other end of the 15 foot canopy we set up a pyramid type set of tiers. There is a tall board right under the edge of the canopy, and a lower tier inside the canopy. On the outside is another lower tier, so people approaching the booth from that side also see a tier of flowers. Back on the inside, we also have a board that runs along the back that is the same height as the lower tiers of the pyramid, and joins them in an L-shape. Our wrapping table, the back board, and the tiers make an open space that invites people to come into the tent and shop. Also, at the back of the booth is a large chalkboard with prices and info, and a large 3 x 5 foot photo of Frank and our daughter, Hannah-Rose, picking sunflowers. It’s a stunning photo, and gets lots of remarks. Again, it’s more trouble to set up, but it is worth it.

We set mixed bouquets on the lower inside tiers, solid bunches and giant bouquets on the top tiers and outside tier, and at the front of the tiers on the ground we set the really tall stuff like lilies and delphiniums. We have a parking meter at the curb that we try to hide with hanging baskets or tall sunflowers. We also have to make sure that there is plenty of room on the sidewalk in front of the booth for people, strollers and wheelchairs.

We tried to set up our booth so it felt like we were a permanent fixture of the market, like we were THE flower stall there, and that people could come in and be comfortable. It’s important that people don’t feel crowded, so we make sure there is room for people to reach the top tier of flowers without straining over buckets on the ground. We also had to be aware of the “Butt Space” concern. From a merchandising standpoint, it is believed that people will not frequent an area and will leave before purchasing anything if they feel someone’s rear end brush against theirs! We’re not making this up! So it is important that people feel that their personal space is not infringed upon when they come in to browse.

We did a test run of the setup a week before the first market, and it has worked well enough that we haven’t needed to change it. But within a couple of weeks we realized that marketing was going to be our next challenge. The first week of the market was highly publicized, and there were throngs of people. We sold $2,200 worth the first day! The next week was Mother’s Day (The day we had no change!) and that was $2,000 also. But the following week sales dropped to $1,000 and hovered there for a while. We figured there were a couple of good reasons for the drop. One was explained to us by a market-going friend. She said to expect a J-curve in sales where they drop precipitously after the initial hoopla, and then recover and steadily work back up. We could buy that. Another reason was that there are two other flower sellers at the market. When we first came into the market, we had by far the most flowers. (One of our friends came by the first day and kept repeating “Shock and Awe, man, Shock and Awe!”) As a couple of weeks passed, the other vendors had a better selection. We also noticed that as sales got slower, the other two vendors dropped their bouquet price to 2 dollars below ours, and it looked like we were losing sales to price shoppers. This is when we decided that being the biggest and most colorful wasn’t going to be enough. The other two vendors are friends of ours, but competition is competition!

We had no intention of lowering our prices. We could just sell it wholesale if we wanted to do that. We decided to figure out a marketing strategy. How could we get market loyalty for our bouquet at 2 dollars more, and what can we do to sell a product to the person shopping for price?

For the price shopper, we took a page from the playbook of our friend Betsy Hitt at Peregrine Farm in North Carolina. Betsy and her husband Alex sell at the Carrboro farmers market. She had told us how she sold a lot more product when she took her standard 10-stem bunch and split it into two five-stem bunches. Her 10-stem bunch would sell for $5, but wouldn’t sell out. When she split the bunch to five stems and sold it for $3.50 she sold out. That’s called hitting a price point. We had our straight bunch material priced around $6 a bunch. It sold OK, but really slowed down a few weeks into the market. We decided to try pricing most of our “ordinary” flowers (zinnias, rudbeckia, statice, etc…) in a “3 for $10.00 or $3.50 a bunch” price group. We cut the bunch size in half, and we call them the “Mix and Match” bunches, and we dedicate the whole outside tier of the display to them. It has been a smashing success! People almost always go for the whole $10 worth, and we sell out of most things. And the person who wants just a few flowers can be happy with a $3.50 bunch!

Winning repeat business
The bouquet sales were a bit more challenging. One of the problems that dedicated flower growers run into at farmers market is that a lot of vegetable growers will grow a few rows of flowers and come to market with a few buckets of simple bouquets. This seemed to be a real problem at the Madison market when we visited it last fall. At our market, one of the other vendors is a dedicated flower grower (a former intern at our farm!) and another is a neighbor here in Blanco who grows both flowers and vegetables. We expect other growers will have flowers soon. So we needed to think of some ways to get people coming to us every week.

One way we catch people is by setting up part of our wrapping table to make bouquets on site. We try to arrive at the market with 50 or 75 bouquets pre-made, but then we bring along a couple of buckets of each of the flowers that we have that week. These buckets go on the ground behind the wrapping table, and because we are the end booth, they sort of spill out under the trees. It makes a wonderful display of abundance and really catches people’s eyes. Pamela will reach back there and make bouquets during spare moments and people love it. We even get folks requesting bouquets be made for them on the spot from the extra buckets.

But our best idea so far has been our frequent buyer’s bouquet card. We are worried that we may have created a monster!

The idea of a frequent buyer’s card is not a new one. Our favorite grocery store has one for bulk coffee, and many growers have one at their market. We wanted to do one, but we really doubted that a reward like a free bouquet after ten purchases was going to be enough. We wanted to come up with something that was really going to get folks excited, and make them really want to fill up their card. Something they couldn’t get anywhere else.

So we came up with this: “On October 25th, we are going to be serving a Gourmet Magazine style ‘Dinner in the Flower Fields’ at sunset in our field. We are both going to be the chefs, and we are going to grow a great mess of fresh fall vegetables to serve, along with Texas seafood from the Gulf Coast, and Texas wines, all out in the beautiful Texas Hill Country 45 minutes west of town. When you fill up a bouquet card you will receive two tickets to be our guests at the farm.”

“You’re Kidding?” one lady said as she stared in disbelief when Frank handed her the card . Another started jumping up and down on the spot. “OhmyGodOhmyGod…this is incredible!” The response has been overwhelming! The first week we handed out the card people thought it was great. The second week we had them coming back for another stamp, and on top of that we had new customers coming up and saying they heard about the card and wanted to start one! Word got around pretty quickly. People regularly ask if they can buy tickets to the dinner. (The answer is no, the dinner is exclusively for our regular customers, but we can start you a card!) We’ve had chefs and caterers volunteer to help, just to be there!
Now we have regular customers coming back for their fourth, fifth, or sixth stamp. Pamela has started asking these folks their names, because, as she tells them, it looks like we’ll be having dinner together this fall! They love it!

Our rules are these: There are 15 spots on the card. You can get one stamp for every $12 bouquet purchase (or equivalent value) up to 2 stamps per day ($24). When you get all 15 spots stamped, you’ll get 2 tickets to the dinner. The tickets are fully transferable, and you can give them as gifts if you can’t make it. That’s all there is to it.

We have the information about the card posted in the stand and at the register, but Frank or our son Derrick (the cashiers) give everyone a rundown about the card with their first purchase. If a person is really close to $12, say 11.50 with tax, we will often go ahead and start them a card. We don’t give one for a “3 for $10.00” purchase, but sometime a person will buy an extra bunch just to get the card. Sometimes a customer will only notice the card after they’ve already made a smaller purchase. If they are excited enough, we’ll start them a card anyway–we know they’ll be back!

So now we are wondering what we have done! The bouquet card has taken on a life of its own. Can we afford it? We think so. A full card is worth $180 in sales. By growing a lot of the food, and preparing it ourselves, we think we can do it for about $10 a head. And most of all, it’s going to be fun! We always like to have a party to close out the season. The customers are really excited about this. What a great combination.

The downtown farmer’s market is a new experience for us, and we are learning as we go. We’ll keep you posted on how things go, but for now we are out of space. We are taking a break next month and we’ll be back in September. Hasta Luego!