What is all the “buzz” about?

What is all the “buzz” about? was Originally Posted on March 18, 2007 by lavarock

I joined the Farm Bureau because they have a Farmers Market each Saturday in Keahou. You have to be a member to sell at the market and a couple of friends/neighbors say that it is very lucrative. I drug my feet for many months because it requires that you set up at 7am and that means getting up at about 5am. They shut down at noon. However, I would sell a lot of coffee.

Checking that they still had room at the farmers market, I joined in January and then looked all over the Internet for a canopy. We use them to protect us from the sun and the very slim possibility of rain. I was finally able to get one at my local Wal-Mart which saved me shipping costs. I bought some nice cloth and had it fashioned into a fitted tablecloth. I dummied up the table display and made price tags. I gathered lots of dollar bills for change and started ramping up to have lots of roasted coffee ready each Friday so I could pack the truck. Then I waited, and waited and waited.

Finally, I got an email that I would NOT be able to sell there. They came up with a couple reasons, among them, that they had too many people selling coffee already! I wish they told me that 2 months earlier! I have spent $300 to get this display ready, only to be told no.

This market was fairly convenient; I knew many of the participants and would have only taken my Saturday morning to make a giant contribution towards my monthly mortgage. Now I have all of the stuff ready with nowhere to go. The other farmers markets are expensive and further away.

I have considered just pulling the truck up along the road and selling bags of coffee from there. I tried that once near COSTCO with less than great results; I think because most of the people passing were residents; many with their own coffee.

In preparation to sell other things besides coffee, my neighbor is getting me some fresh local honey. I had asked her to get it ready for me and then found out that I would not be up at the market. Since she is preparing this just for me, I didn’t want to go back on my order, thus I will have a lot of honey with 1 less place to sell it. It tastes great, but will be somewhat difficult to sell online because of the shipping cost. The plastic bottles are 1 pound, which means that they will cost at least $4.05 to ship by themselves. That means that unless somebody is made of money and wants to spend it, I am going to have to come up with some gift basket ideas. Oh that won’t be too hard, but gift baskets sell better just before a holiday.

In preparation of the honey sale, I started designing a label. I was hoping to have bees or a beekeeper wearing aloha shirts, but I’m not a graphic artist! I’ll be happy just to make a legal label and sell some honey! Right now I have the honey listed on the website for $999 a pound. It will be considerably less when it is actually available J

So if you are planning a honey purchase anytime soon, please consider waiting a week or so. This may well be the best honey you have tried. They have to be the least stressed bees in the world. They live in paradise so how bad can it bee for them? (pun intended)