Adventures in Selling Baked Goods

[Chocolatl]

Got the email saying I didn't get approved for the first choice after all. Le sigh. On the bright side, I'm approved for my second choice and will be there every weekend starting Oct. 6! Hooray!

[glatt]

I'm glad you got into your second choice. Too soon to get baking, I suppose, but soon enough.

[Clodfobble]

That's good news! I hope you sell a lot.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by Chocolatl

Got the email saying I didn't get approved for the first choice after all. Le sigh. On the bright side, I'm approved for my second choice and will be there every weekend starting Oct. 6! Hooray!

Did #1 say why ?

I suppose it's of interest to you only if you had significant reasons
for choosing it as your first choice. But OTOH, it might be something
you would want to know about for the future.

[Chocolatl]

#1 was my first choice because it was closest to home and takes place at a beautiful outdoor mall, so it gets a lot of foot traffic.

They only have so many vendor spots available, and returning vendors get first dibs. They normally have a looooong waiting list, vying for five or six spots, so I really didn't expect to get in. They were also told late in the game they need to change the layout due to traffic concerns, so they had to cut about 20 spots.

I'm now on the wait list, so I may be able to get in next year -- or later this year if some other bakers drop out. At least it wasn't an outright rejection.

[Lamplighter]

Very good... best wishes !

[orthodoc]

Glad to hear you're in! Good luck and I hope your sales skyrocket.

[BigV]

Yay Cake!

[Chocolatl]

Thanks all for the kind words! I'm super excited. Now I'm trying to decide how many packages to take in for my first day (which was moved to October 13th). Take too few and risk running out, or take too many and let them go to waste?

[Clodfobble]

At the farmer's market I go to, everyone brings their wares in big coolers, and whatever doesn't sell can just be taken back home again. Or do you bake them on demand the night before, and you're trying to decide how many to make in the first place?

Since you're a new vendor, you might consider cutting up some free samples for people to try.

[Lamplighter]

It might be helpful to do a field study.
Go to the event this coming Sunday and get a feeling for how many
customers the other vendors are getting and selling their products.

Who knows, meeting up with other vendors before your opening might bring unforeseen benefits too.

[Chocolatl]

The trick is the market isn't taking place right now! October 13th is opening day -- this one takes place downtown, so they take the summers off. All that concrete would be unbearable in the Florida sun! So I can't go scope it out.

I'm definitely planning to have samples, but legally I have to portion those out at home and not at the market. I am planning to take the whoopie pies in coolers, but they won't keep for a week until the next market day. I think I'll err on the side of plenty, at first, and then fine tune as we go on.

[limey]

But then again, if you've sold out then some people may say "Wahey! They're that good she's sola out ..." and no wastage is always good ....


Sent by thought transference

[BigV]

One way of looking at the question of how many to make is this:

decide how much money you want to make. actually pick a number.

figure out how many whoopies you have to bake to get that money, including samples, cost of materials, etc.

make that number of whoopies

go sell them

if you sell out, you made your target, you reached your goal, CONGRATULATIONS!

if you don't sell out, evaluate what happened. did you overestimate how many you could sell? did you pick too high a number? was it close enough to be within your margin of error? was your price too high? etc.

....

Of course, you want to make as much money as possible. but there's also something to be said for just reaching your goals. when you eat, you just eat a sufficiency, not all the food you can hold, right? enough is enough. well, anyhow, until you have more empirical data about your sales, picking a goal seems to me like a useful approach.

*****

regarding the samples.

since you say your whoopies won't last a week until the next sale, can you sell them elsewhere before they expire? will you be able to eat them up at home/neighbors/friends between the end of the market and the expiry of the whoopie? what about sample *size* whoopies that could be sold in a sixpack of tinys or given away as individual "samples"?

I'm just thinking out loud here.

GOOD LUCK, THEY LOOK DELICIOUS!!

[limey]

Big V has some excellent ideas!