Fruits & Vegetables business:

Fruits & Vegetables business has always been a thriving business. In this article i will tell you complete details about fruits and vegetables business which will definitely help you in future. The first point is how to display your product when you only have a small space, so let’s go inside and get started. If I was working with this much space, I would pick items based on how much are you going to sell, and I would pick items that are low perish ability, items that will hold good for a long period of time on your display.

 

Fruits and vegetables selling business
 Fruits and vegetables selling business

 

Highly selling items:

Potatoes  is a high volume item and it actually holds up really well. Onions compliment it, and once again, low perish-ability item. Garlic, a complimentary item, carrots, a lot of use in carrots, and then your fresh fruits, your apples, your oranges, and your bananas. All these things are year round items. To add some fun to your display, if you have room, and either that your customers might like, or add some seasonal items, the green beans are actually a seasonal item. Those are really good during the summer and strawberries. Adding strawberries and these items will actually create a lot of life for your display and promote overall volume and help you make money.

 In determining how much to buy, always try to buy in full units. When you buy in a full unit you canon sure the best price point to make the most money. And if you’re worried about storage pace, I’ll tell you some clever storage ideas later.

Source of supplying fresh fruits and vegetables:

On  where to buy your fresh fruits and vegetables. I’d start with your existing vendors; somebody might be delivering fresh fruits and vegetables already that you’re working with. I would also try your club type of stores, you might have a local Grocery Cash and Carry that will offer advantageous price points at near wholesale prices. But a really fun one is to visit your local farmers’ market, there’s a lot of farmers who would love to sell to a store and have some week day sales, so if you make relationship with somebody, that could be real good source of supplying items to your customers.

 As an example on what we would actually price something out at, if apples are 25 cents each, then we times three, that’s 75. If the apples are a bigger size you could even round the item up to a dollar, or drop it two for a dollar. Averaging out prices and arriving at a single denomination like a dollar makes it really easy for the people to grab a few items, especially if you do that with your whole display. I always use this method, it’s wholesale times three, it’s really common in the retail food industry and it sounds like maybe you’re charging too much, but you’ve got to take into account justifying the space that the stuff takes up in your store, everything has to make money.

Serve your community and your customers: 

You are going to have some shrinkage in amount of product that you can’t sell, and the whole goal is to make a small profit so that you can continue to serve your customers with fresh fruits and vegetables. When I was first starting retail, I, of course, I had a tendency to want to put things on sale, because I needed to sell them faster or had a lot of product and I wanted to move it. So I put things on sale for half price. You have to sell twice as much of it, and at the end of the day I actually made less money and the side effect also was the customers got used to a cheaper price. So I’ve quickly learned that to be successful and to actually make money selling produce, you should maintain an average price point and don’t put things on sale.

Group your items:

Customers like to feel like they have a full display to pick from and they have first pick. So you’ll always want to group your items up heaping full and you want to project abundance. No some clever ways to do that so you don’t have to actually display a lot of stuff is your baskets are low, so there’s a lot of ratio between product that the customers see, and what’s in the basket, and you can even pad up the bottom of the basket, not only does this reserve your product from getting bruised, but it also projects abundance. You can take the same amount of product and have it heaping full, or you can have your display level, but always keep things heaping full.

One other aspect of a really good display that will help sales is adding a vertical dimension. Even on a display like this, even though it’s on a table, you will notice that I stepped it up from low, medium to high heights. That actually makes it more impact because from a distance it’s more viewable, and once again, not just crown baskets, but as stepping up in the back. One other clever idea, if you have a corner, you’ve got an ice vertical floor display that steps it up, takes less space and actually adds more dimension and elements in your produce display. And I always try to visualize my product as on a flow from your storage area, to your retail space, to your customer basket, and out the store. So if you keep it flowing it makes you more money.

Don’t display bad product:

The first one is don’t display bad product. You really want to take product off your display that isn’t a good representation of what you’re selling, because you’ll restrict product flow. I call it clogging the pipe and you don’t want to clog the pipe, because if you clog the pipe everything here is going to age. You want to keep it flowing; keeping it flowing keeps it fresh.  But if you put something on top of the display that doesn’t look that good it’s going to be a reflection on your whole display. I notice at the end of those days we actually sold quite a bit less of a certain item, and you certainly will sell less overall, because it, once again will be a reflection of everything on the display.

Bagging items:

At the end you will actually make more money taking some product out of your displays. One idea that I’ve learned that’s really effective is bagging certain items. Bagging items does a few things, one is it increases your rotation. You can take a few items off the top that may be will go bad in a few days but are really good now. You put them in a bag and you can maintain your price point and have a slight discount for the bag. Bags are preferential to a lot of customers. In fact, I noticed that bags will out sell bulk sales three to one.

There’s a few reasons for that, one is the product looks and is perceived as being untouched to the consumer, it’s more convenient, people can grab it and go. The combination though of bulk and bag actually increases overall sales because more people are actually apt to buy a bag if there’s a nice bulk display in front of it. So the combination works really well together.

Other ideas to keep your display looking nice and increase product flow are samples. Samples greatly enhance sales, sales will double or triple with sampling. Also, you might want to share some of this with your employees, not only will your employees like you, but they’re going to benefit by increased product knowledge and willingness to engage your customers on ideas and things to do with the vegetables.

Marked with prices:

Last, we’ve already recalculated our shrinkage, which is the items you’re not going to sale in a pricing formula, so now that you’re buying wholesale fruits and vegetables, you can actually bring some home to your family, because it’s all about keeping it look nice and keeping the product flowing to make the most money. One area to help you is sales that often gets overlooked is really clear and concise signage. You really want to have your items displayed clearly marked with prices.

There’s a large percentage of customers that will be afraid to ask for prices and actually will be less tempted to buy your item. You can also have some fun with your signs by adding some extra information about the product tastes like, or maybe the local farmer that produces it. Some general themes are you want to actually keep your signs consistent, maybe your paper color is consistent, your pens are consistent, and you might want to think about storing them like I do in a container.

Fun with your seasonal items:

I found that if I keep all my sign making material in one place and clean then i have extra signs ready to go, it really helps me get the signs up nice and keep them looking good. Also think about having some fun with your seasonal items, you might want to actually show your customers that the strawberries are local. If you want to have some fun with signs you might also add some added verbiage, maybe mention the grower, the farmer, or how the product tastes.

Storage and maintenance:

And then last, you might want to include some overall signage, something that kind of captures your space, and lets people know what’s new and what’s exciting. Now let’s think about protecting our investment through proper storage and maintaining freshness. There are certain things that you want to bring in after business hours into refrigeration, and those items typically are your items that wilt easily, mostly your leafy greens. Here for example, I would bring in the jalapeno peppers, the local green beans, carrots, some of your fresh fruit, local fruit items, and to maintain crispness on apples, I actually do like to store the apples overnight in refrigeration.

Also the things you leave out, if you cover them with a cloth it’ll do two things, it’ll prevent some dehydration overnight and it will also keep the light off the potatoes which are light sensitive and will turn green if left exposed. All fruits and vegetables suffer age through dehydration. So even items we bring in refrigeration at night should be hydrated really well and kept moist. We can accomplish that through damp cloths over the top, restricting some air movement, and also using seal-able containers.

Advertises fresh fruits and vegetables:

Seal-able containers are nice, because they maintain their moisture and you’ll also want some separation between your items that produce ethylene gas. Most of those are your fruit items that will actually turn your leafy greens and like items yellow over time. Even things like the green beans, I would keep in a seal-able container and separate. Have an A frame sign outside of your store that advertises fresh fruits and vegetables, but be specific, because if you have something that says fresh local strawberries, that’s more apt to get customers in your store. And also engage your customers, ask them for items they want to see and actually listen for items when they mention they are looking for something.