> really? consumers can detect no differences between a raw varietal honey
and Souix Bee?
> so most honey is the same just sweet eh?
Subject your view to a "blind consumer taste test", and you will find that
for the overwhelming majority of people, Bill's observation is absolutely
correct.
Anyone who sells honey to the consumer will have several funny tales
of buyers asking for "more of the same honey you sold me last time",
with praise being heaped upon honey that the beekeeper is bemused to
recall did not seem all that exceptional to him.
If you hand your honey to an experienced honey judge (such as Ann Harmon
here on the East coast of the USA) he/she may be able to tell you the plant
from which the majority of the nectar was gathered, and, by tasting alone,
tell you other detailed things about the "quality" of your honey. But
don't expect the customer to become a connoisseur without education, so
be prepared to do some education if you want to build a "following" for
your honey based upon your view of "quality".
But can the consumer do this without education? Heck, I still can't do
it myself. I've attended several dozen "honey tastings" in the past
decade or so,and I am lousy at even telling one varietal from another,
even when I am given a list of what honey varieties are presented.
If I can't match names to tastes, lots of non-beekeepers can't either.
The good news is that, for most beekeepers, "local" sells well, and
can command a higher price than honey from far away, or from
who-knows-where.
Consumers have become aware of the advantages of "local food". So, simply
promoting your honey as "local" may be enough to differentiate your
product, and doing so does not create the sort of ethical dilemmas
presented by using meaningless and misleading terms like "raw" to
describe honey. (But don't forget to call it "fresh"! Everyone asks
"is it fresh?", as honey is perceived as perishable produce. They also
ask how long it will "last", and are happy with the answer "forever".
Funny how no one has recognized the cognitive dissonance between the two
questions, and laughed out loud, but who are we to argue with paying
customers?)
Beekeepers are often affronted by the ignorance of the general population
who buy honey, but the same ignorance exists in the mind of the consumer
about ice cream. Many "premium" brands are only premium because the label
makes the claim, even though cheap ice cream versus great ice cream is
easier to subject to a blind taste test with compelling and consistent
results.
The difference is that the makers of ice cream don't bemoan the lack of
sophistication on the part of the consumer, they make and package ice
cream at both the "budget-conscious" customer between paychecks, and
the "high-end" consumer who wants to "treat themselves" with something
that they perceive as self-indulgent. (Another difference is that ice
cream makers tend to know, for example what the "Black-Scholes model"
for pricing options is, and what it implies for ice cream. I've yet to
meet any beekeepers or honey co-op marketing types who even knew the
names "Black and Scholes", proving that, as a group, we lack basic
education, let alone MBAs. We don't want to admit to ourselves that we
are in the food business. We all want to think that beekeeping and honey
is somehow different. It isn't.)
My favorite example is olive oil. Go to any of the "whole foods" type
markets, or better yet, an ethnic market, and marvel at the entire wall
devoted to olive oil. Luxurious bottles, exotic labels, some labels
without a single word of English (but mysteriously still having a UPC
code compliant with US standards, clearly proving that the lack of
English on the label is pure marketing), and much of it produced in
such small quantities that any one "brand" may be on the shelf for
only a few weeks per year. Now, can YOU tell the difference between
a $5.00 bottle of olive oil, and a $25.00 bottle? I sure can't, but
if someone is willing to pay $25.00 for a bottle of olive oil, I'm
pretty sure that they have convinced themselves that it is worth the
price, for whatever reason.
Funny how a bunch of small family operations on the other side of the
planet have become such sophisticated marketers of their products that
I must be nimble to buy their olive oil at my local store before it sells
out, while beekeepers still speak of "getting rid of honey" as if it
were a liability.
Maybe $40 is a tad over the top for you. But what prevents you from
at least packaging up a "gift bottle", perhaps a Muth bottle, putting
a really nice label on it, and selling it at an appropriate price
that nets you more profit than your usual honey? Learn from the ice
cream companies and the olive oil producers.
If you are buying whatever containers the bee supply houses sell,
and having your labels overprinted on the usual stock label artwork,
you are missing out, and leaving money on the table.
I'll "give away" an approach that can get you at least an extra $2
a pound for your crop, but you'll have to just trust me and try it
to see it work:
1) Get some Ball jars with metal bails.
2) Have a rubber stamp made up with your label information on it
using a font that looks like hand-printing.
3) Buy a package of brown-paper lunch bags, and HAND RIP them
into rough squares to be your "label". Stamp them with the
rubber stamp. Apply them to the Ball jars with glue that you
apply with a sponge or brush.
4) Fill the jars with your honey.
5) Set these "primitive" packages next to your best efforts using
modern plastic containers and 4-color labels, and price them higher.
Cover the extra cost of the more-expensive container, and then
add $2 (or more!) to the price.
The result is very "backwoods". One can almost hear the banjo music.
If asked, explain that this honey has been produced the "old fashioned
way", extracted at room temperature, not run through fancy high-tech
equipment, and so on. (For most of us, a truthful description of our
actual harvest and processing methods would be "the old-fashioned way",
so this is not even stretching the truth!).
Watch the faces when people look at the two kinds of packaging for what
you know to be the same exact honey. Keep a poker face as you put the
money in the pocket of the worn-out jeans you keep in the closet to
only wear to the Farmer's Market. Yes, what you wear matters too, as
you are part of your "product packaging", like it or not.
-- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/bee-l for rules, FAQ and other info ---
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