How many Eggs did you Sell today?

Date sort Score sort
It has been a long time since I have been on the forum, so long that I can't remember what my old screen name was so I had to re-register :-) This was an interesting discussion so I thought I would jump in and tell you about my egg selling business. Years ago I decided to sell eggs from the farm so I visited the USDA extension office to find out if it was legal and what I had to do. It turned out that it was legal and what I had to do to be legal was easy, so I started selling eggs. On my first day I sat a cooler by the road. Within a half hour I got my first customer. It wasn't long before the demand for eggs was higher than the amount of eggs the hens could lay so we had to go on a search for more pullets. We found pullets and had to get a bigger cooler for the extra eggs. We were still selling out so we had to get more pullets. More pullets meant more eggs so we had to get a refrigerator to store the extra eggs and then we'd refill the large cooler as needed. Then I got to thinking that with all the customers we should sell other farm products so we put up a little greenhouse (In the shade) so that people could go in and poke around during any weather. We started selling plants and homemade goods. Business got to be too much for the little greenhouse so we had a small building built. We now sell numerous things from our farm stand and we do pretty good and we owe it all to the eggs, because one dozen a day has lead to many dozen a day and now our customers who started buying from use way back when we first started are still buying eggs but now they're also buying plants, crafts and homemade goods too. We no longer use a cooler, now we have a refrigerator in our farm stand We found that you can never run out of eggs for longer than a day or two, at the very most. It doesn't take long for customers to go right by if they think you don't have eggs. Keep the eggs in stock and your customers will keep coming and since customers will be stopping to buy eggs, you may as well add other items for them to buy. It is important to know the law in your area, for farm stands; some make it next to impossible to run a farm stand and other areas encourage farm stands and make it really easy for a person wanting to start a farm stand. The first step is checking to see what your town ordinances are and then go from there. Your town may allow you to have a farm stand but state laws and USDA laws might make it impossible for you to operate a farm stand on your farm. I just want you all to know that when your customers know they can count on you to keep eggs in supply, they will come back time and time again and since they'll be at the farm to buy eggs, you should take advantage and try to start a little farm stand if that has ever been an idea that you've thought about. Also, we went from selling a dozen eggs a day and sometimes none to selling upwards of 20 dozen per day during peak seasons. We used to place a sign at the road when our eggs were sold out so that people didn't stop for nothing, but now that we have the farm stand, we don't put the sign out because we want people to stop in to the farm stand whether we have eggs or not. Thankfully, if we're out of eggs, it is almost always just for a few hours until we make the rounds to gather more eggs from the hens. Our egg demand continues to climb so last week we bought two new batches of pullets and today we made another trip out to pick up more pullets. It amazes us that a few years back we started selling our eggs from a little red cooler and today, because of our egg customers, we have a little farm stand that we hope someday will make enough money to support our addiction to farming.
 
I am envious! I am still in the "farm stand" phase with two regular customers and family getting eggs. If I have an abundance of vegetables or fruits I sell those as well.
 
We're lucky that we live on a fairly busy road, and we're even more lucky that our community supports us. We are doing so well, at selling eggs, that even though we recently bought several more pullets, to help keep up with demand, it still isn't enough, so tomorrow we are buying almost 100 more pullets. We do what most people wish they could do, we sell out of eggs almost every day, but it wasn't always that way. When we first started selling eggs, we didn't have enough laying hens to keep up with demand. People would stop to buy eggs and if they stopped a couple of times and there were no eggs, they'd go get their eggs somewhere else. It wasn't long before we started getting more eggs than customers so we were feeding a lot of eggs to the pigs. When we were throwing more eggs to the pigs than we were selling, we had to decide whether we were going to sell eggs or watch the pigs eat them, and when we decided we really wanted to sell our eggs, we had to face the fact that we needed more laying hens to keep up with the demand and that we had to always do our very best to have enough eggs to satisfy our customers. This time of year used to be very slow, for us, but with our new farm stand, our egg business has increased drastically. Although our egg sales don't pay for the farm, we manage to sell enough to cover the cost of our chickens, enough in sales to buy a new tiller for our tractor, enough to have our farm stand built and enough that we can buy other products to sell from our farm stand. Each dozen of eggs that we sell helps us grow a little bigger. It's hard to believe that it all started just a few years back with the idea to set a cooler by the road and see if we could sell a couple dozen eggs a week. I think there are three important things to be successful when selling eggs. 1) Location. We could not sell the eggs we do if we did not live on a busy road. We are located right in the middle of two decent sized towns. People travel from one town to the other and pass by our farm to get there 2) Keep enough chickens to keep up with demand and make sure the eggs are fresh. 3) Make sure the eggs you're selling are clean. A clean egg is extremely important as most customers (who buy from our farm) are woman who appreciate cleanliness. No cracked or stained eggs ever go out to the farm stand, instead we use them for ourselves.
 

Similar threads

MegsAndFeatheredFriends
    • Like
    • Love
How many hens for a 4 person household?/Potential oversupply??
4 5 6
Replies
52
Views
10K
Appalachickens
Appalachickens
Sloane Chickens
    • Like
Selling eggs for consumption.
Replies
2
Views
1K
Perris
Perris
1955babe
Forgotten Eggs
Replies
3
Views
281
BigBlueHen53
BigBlueHen53
Barb Root Hinkkanen
How Many Hens?
Replies
3
Views
1K
sniper338
sniper338
L
Shell-less eggs, How many is to many
2
Replies
10
Views
1K
Fluffy_Butt_Hutt
Fluffy_Butt_Hutt

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom