Need Ideas

[greenthebean]

Hi all. Looking for your brilliance.

My partner went a bit bonkers with ordering chicks and last year. Fast forward to now - we are getting about 4-5 dozen a day. We live in the bubs of LA but have a big piece of property in-between two schools (read: a butt-ton of foot traffic), so we are setting up a wine cooler out front with a sign advertising the eggs and some kind of secure money contraption; so people can just stop by and buy eggs without us there. Of course this is risky, you never know when someone might steal, but we're willing to take that chance. Our neighborhood is pretty decent and we know most folk around here, but like I said - you never know. I was considering just getting a simple "charity" style box where it has a lock and a slot. I'm not sure how secure this is. My partner suggested that he will park in the driveway, keep the window rolled down just a bit, leave some envelopes nearby, lock the car and put a sign on the window saying to slip the money envelopes "here". To me this sounds a bit complicated.

We could sit out front and sell the eggs to avoid this entire security issue, but honestly - neither one of us want to since we both work quite a lot, and when we get home we spend most of our time with the animals until dark.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[raingarden]

We use a locked box with a slot. People have pulled the box off the post, smashed the wooden box and stuff like that. The hard part is not letting occasional theft get under your skin. If you had to sit there all day it would not be worth it and most people are honest.

 

[greenthebean]

We use a locked box with a slot. People have pulled the box off the post, smashed the wooden box and stuff like that. The hard part is not letting occasional theft get under your skin. If you had to sit there all day it would not be worth it and most people are honest.

Wow, that's terrible to hear. I agree most people are honest. I'm thinking we will set it up during the brighter hours only, since most people passing by are picking up their elementary-aged children, and I'm going to hope they won't steal with their kids around. I also have an older dash-cam that I'm debating setting up nearby just to deter any thieves (the camera doesn't work but how would they know?). Not sure though. Guess we'll see it how it goes. I think I'm going to leave a note with our numbers so people can buy directly and hopefully we won't need to set up the wine-cooler anymore.

 

[greenthebean]

Just to update in case anyone happens upon this in the same situation . . we set up our small wine cooler we got on offerup for $25 on our front porch at least 50% stocked all the time, I think it has 4 racks. We advertised our eggs on nextdoor and on craigslist, through there we got a few regulars to buy whatever they need from the cooler. We decided against advertising out on the street with a sign to avoid the city giving us a notice and to avoid theft.