Farmers Market Drinks
At a farmers market drinks can be a popular product. We had a lot of success for a couple of years selling drinks. Like any line of products you will need to do some farmers market research first. Yes, go to a market and see what is being sold. Ask some questions and find out if you are ALLOWED to sell drinks at the farmers market.
Sodas at the Farmers Market
We would buy the drinks at SAMS Club or even Walmart in bulk. 12 and 24 packs and then drag an ice chest along filled with as much ice as we could manage. The drinks were incredibly cold. We iced them down immediately and made sure that we had at least a half dozen of each variety on ice before market opened. Plenty of iced water was also popular. All drinks were sold for $1. This made it easy for us to keep track. We did make exception to this and sold some energy drinks for $2. These were reasonably popular but were more expensive to buy and therefore to sell. Another thing we did was to just sell drinks that we liked ourselves.
Coffee HOT and Iced
One of my market friends roasts coffee beans and then sells the whole bean roasted coffee in bags or he will have it freshly ground for sale also.
As a bonus he sells hot and iced coffee. its fresh, its natural tastes great. He has value added to his product and he has a great price too.
By buying his coffee beans in bulk he is able to buy cheaper and therefore make more profit. We all like profit!
Tea Hot and Iced
Is there any beverage with greater profit margin than Iced Tea? Make it by the gallon in advance. Have plenty of ice. Have some pre-prepared sweet and unsweetened for sale at the next Farmers’ Market.
Lemonades
Lemonade is a favorite at farmers’ markets in the summer. Make your lemonade with a premix but add some fresh lemon pieces to give it that authenticity and some added flavor. Plenty of ice and a bright colored plastic cup. We sold plenty of lemonade.
Smoothies
Friends at market decided one year to make smoothies. Fruit smoothies are so tasty and healthy that they fit right in with the Farmers’ Market theme. My friends kept it simple and did quite well by having a banana based smoothie with some orange juice and other fruits. Cut the fruit up on the spot or have it pre-prepared, add some of whatever your farmers market customer wants and into the blender.
The smoothies were walking out the door at $2-$3 each.
(By the way they bought the bananas cheap at Walmart when they were about to throw them out.)
Juices
Everyone these days is health conscious and seem to be getting more so. Healthy juices are a great product to sell at the farmers’ market. I would try to have them freshly juiced.
- Have fruit on display.
- Let the customer choose what to juice.
- Maybe make smoothies also.
- Add some ice to bulk it out and put a chill on it.
YUM and $$$
Come back for more ideas of how to be a success at the weekly farmers’ market.