Shawn Hirn wrote:
> In article >,
> "Ed Pawlowski" > wrote:
>
>> "Mr. Nonsense" > wrote in message
>> ...
>>> Why are farmers market always more expensive than the grocery store?
>>> I'm sure there must be good reasons for this. But I can think of three
>>> reasons why they should be cheaper:
>>>
>>> 1. They have no expensive advertising and marketing costs
>>>
>>> 2. They have no nationwide distribution costs, most of it is local.
>>>
>>> 3. They have no high overhead that is typical of large corporations.
>>> In other words they are not paying fat salaries/benefits to people to
>>> do monkey work.
>>>
>>> I could see they suffer from one disadvantage, no benefit from
>>> economies of scale. I think the key points listed above should more
>>> than make up for that.
>> Some either do the labor of picking themselves or pay a better wage than the
>> big farms using lots of migrants. They tend to hand pick instead of having
>> a huge machine for harvesting. That makes them more selective of actually
>> ripe produce.
>>
>> They are taking relatively small quantities to the market, not shipping
>> truck loads. They have to set up and tear down every market day. What you
>> perceive as cost savings, I see as a cost increase.
>
> Some farmers markets are really just supermarkets in disguise where
> their produce is not locally grown. In farmers markets where their stuff
> is locally grown, I have found them to be cheaper than supermarkets.

We had one like that here a few years ago. I seriously doubt there were
any farmers there. It was more of a flea market and sellers bought
crates of produce somewhere to sell. I think people realized what it was
about and it isn't here anymore.