Farmers' Market Sales 2021 goes live as a free webinar on April 21, and if you're a producer who leaned hard into direct sales last year and isn't sure whether to keep leaning that way this season, it was built with exactly that question in mind.
A lot of members who started selling direct in 2020 did it out of necessity — a wholesale account paused, an event canceled, a market that suddenly needed a curbside version. A year on, some of that early scramble has settled into something closer to a real channel, with its own regulars and its own logistics. Other members have told us the early burst of direct-to-consumer interest cooled faster than they expected once other options reopened, and they're trying to figure out whether it's worth the stand fee and the Saturday morning to keep showing up. The webinar doesn't assume an answer either way; it's built for members somewhere in the middle of that decision.
What the session actually covers
The agenda leans practical rather than motivational. Expect time on pricing a market stand differently than a wholesale account — smaller volumes, more price sensitivity from a walk-up customer than from a buyer you've worked with for years — and on the paperwork side of selling direct, including labeling requirements that differ from what you'd put on a wholesale case. There's also a segment built around cold-chain logistics for a producer without a refrigerated truck: what a market morning actually asks of a cooler, a cold pack, and a folding table in the sun.
If your creamery picked up direct sales for the first time last year, this is a good one to have your whole counter team sit in on, not just whoever handles pricing. A lot of the value in a market stand comes from the person actually standing at it, and that's usually not the same person who set the price sheet.
What's changed since last spring
A year ago, a session like this one would have spent most of its time on the mechanics of just getting a market open at all — spacing rules, mask requirements, how to keep a line moving without anyone bunching up at the register. Markets that have reopened this spring are still following distancing guidance, but the conversation among vendors has shifted from "can we run a market safely" to "which of these adaptations are worth keeping." Several markets that added online pre-ordering or contactless pickup out of necessity last year have found those options attracted a customer who wouldn't otherwise have made it to a Saturday morning stand, and plan to keep them running even as in-person shopping returns to something closer to normal. The webinar spends a segment on exactly that question: which pandemic-era habits are worth folding into your regular operation, and which were only ever meant to get you through.
The webinar is free and open to all members; it runs virtually, so no travel is required, which has been the case for most of our programming this year. If you attended one of our earlier virtual sessions and found the format worked for your schedule, this one follows the same structure. Registration is on the events calendar in the member portal, and a recording will be posted afterward for anyone who can't make the live date.
For members who want a deeper dive once the webinar wraps, the Direct-to-Consumer & Farmers' Markets course in our catalog goes further into the same material over several sessions, with more room for questions specific to your own setup. It's a natural next step if the webinar raises more questions about your own pricing or logistics than it answers in an hour.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.