a Justin Kay snip followed by my comments..

>When I started selling local, I sold at $7 lb. I had a ton of people haggle
>with me, compare to grocery store honey.

I guess there are a number of comments I could make relative to this thread but at this time and given my spring time labor constraint I will keep comment short.  It seems Justin and my own experience seems to be on the same track. One advantage small to middle size honey producers can do is to sell retail* and demand a premium price for their product.  This requires a lot of marketing time and building a consumer base. It also requires several sizes of containers. Part of the profile it a customer will first buy the smallest container and then when they discover 'your honey taste nothing like the honey I have been buying in the store' they begin buying larger containers.

There are some intermediate sized operation here in Texas that are non migratory and seem to be following the same marketing plan... ie they skip the middle man and sell directly to the consumer.  These are also diversifying product line and are creating the idea of their retail location as a 'destination' point. Casually they seem to be doing quite well financially.

*It should be stated that about 2/3 of the US honey crop goes into flavoring for foods.  Structurally this means a lot of larger operation are not even int he same market as small producer selling to the end consumer.  Since honey is a substitute good for sugar in this market the price of the two are closely connected.

Gene in Central Texas...



             ***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software.  For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html