Printing Egg Cartons

[Joe Jordan]

Thanks for the footwork. I did decide to go plastic and believe I bought the exact kind in your picture. People love 'em! It shows off the colorful eggs inside and provides for safe transportation. As for keeping with the whole green thing, I decided to put a sticker on each one encouraging people to reuse the cartons. Since they're not biodegradable, this helps me to feel a bit better about the decision.

 

[LiLChicken]

Why not just have as many large stickers made as you need and slap them on top of the blank cartons

 

[Jenny1]

I want to get the recycled ones. I love the hot pink ones but the flat top is supposed to be more secure for the eggs.

I made this just now for a sign at work, not totally done but you get the idea:

I think you can charge more than 2 dollars a dozen. Thats how much they are at Albertsons, for the caged ones.

 

[MorgansManor]

I think you can charge more than 2 dollars a dozen. Thats how much they are at Albertsons, for the caged ones.

hooligan -
First I love your art work very creative.
I agree with Jenny1 about charging more for your eggs. I am currently getting more and no complaints most folks appreciate farm fresh eggs. Good luck!

 

[MGFarm]

I agree with others; you should sell your eggs for more. You should at least sell your eggs for at least the same price as the comparable eggs in your local grocery store, maybe round up to the nearest quarter. We are not certified organic either, so we price our eggs the same as those labeled "cage free" or "natural" in our local store. For instance, if those labeled in that manner in our local store sell for $2.78, then we may sell ours for $2.75 at the house or $3.00 at the local farmer's market.

The chicken and egg operations is actually our 12 year old daughter's business. We got her started almost 3 years ago and continue to increase her flock size based on increased customer demand. We started her out with 18 chicks the first year. In the beginning, we had trouble selling just those eggs at just $2 doz when the commercial white eggs in the store were $2.84. Someone recommended to us that if we sell cheap, then people will think our eggs are no better than the store eggs. So we raised the price comparable to the more expensive "cage free" and "natural" eggs in the store and started to explain the benefits of pastured eggs on our FB website. Sure enough, our customers began to grow faster than we could keep up. My daughter now has around 90 hens and she sells out almost daily and sells around 47-50 doz a week; all word of mouth. We are buying her another 150 chicks to keep up with customer demand. She currently sells between 47-49 doz a week.

Here are the challenges we face selling on site in a small local town where money is tight.

1. Because of the credit card and debit card, nobody carries cash, much less change. So people are less inclined to go to an ATM and pay a service fee just to get cash to buy eggs.

2. People have become creatures of convenience. People do not want to go out of their way or make a special stop just to buy a dozen of eggs. We have people pass our house just to buy eggs from the Food Lion that is just 1/2 mile down the road. Most buy their eggs when they make their weekly trek to Walmart. It is too inconvenience to stop for eggs.

3. We have customers on SNAP that would buy eggs, but we are not set up for SNAP.

4. The vast majority of our target audience don't really care about how healthier our eggs are or how much better they taste--they are only concerned about the lowest price. With the economy like it is, I really cannot blame them. So it is a hard sell at $3/doz when they can get the commercial white egg at Food Lion for $2.78.

5. As far as potential wholesale customers, (local restaurants and stores), they get their commercial white eggs from off the truck from major wholesale food vendors like SYSCO for some ridiculous price like $1.50-$1.75 a dozen and will not even consider fresh brown eggs even at $2/doz.

To overcome problems 1-3, we are going to a POS system on our Iphone, like "Square" and registering to be an approved SNAP vendor. As far as overcoming 4-5, all we can do is continue to educate people on the health benefits of fresh pastured eggs.

Back to pricing: We sell retail from an honor box on our back porch and at farmer's markets. We sell wholesale to a Williamsburg based CSA and to a couple of small country stores. Up until now, we have taken the time to weigh our eggs IAW USDA weight standards and price our eggs according to size. We had to do this because our local buyers were comparing our egg size and prices with what they could get at Food Lion. Obviously, taking the time to weigh the eggs is extra work and cuts into daughter's profit, but our customers seem to like the pricing system. We sell our Med for $2, our Large for $2.25, our XL for $2.75 and our Jumbos for $3.25. We have some customers that will only pay $2 / doz and if we are out of Medium eggs, they will not pay an extra quarter for a dozen of large. For our wholesale customers, we sell a mix of L and XL for $2.75/doz and they sell them for $3/doz. $3 / doz is pretty much the max price you can get in our area. The closer you get to Richmond and Hampton Roads, then you can charge $3.50-$4.50 and sell out easily. In metropolitan areas, there are more people educated on the benefits of pastured eggs and they have more disposable income than people in small rural areas.

Starting this spring, we will be traveling to a couple of farmer's markets in Richmond and Newport News and will be initially pricing our eggs for $3.50 / doz. If they sell out within the hour like others are saying, then we will price them 25 cents higher each week until they don't sell fast. In Ashland, Virginia Beach and some areas of Richmond they are selling out at $4.50 / doz.

I know this was long, but I hope you can get more for your eggs than what you are selling them for. I don't see how you can break even selling them for the price you are selling them for considering the cost of feed keeps going up.
Tracy

 

[tacraig07]

You could always get your cartons and print your own labels with address or shipping labels. You can even have Staple's or a print shop custom make your label if you don't want to, then print from home!

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

Remember, if you sell eggs for less than they cost to produce (and don't forget cost of the bird, shipping, cost of the electricity and lights for brooding, cost of the feed they eat before they lay a single egg, cost of the increase in your water bill, cost of the carton, cost of dewormer, cost of fencing and housing) then you're basically paying someone else to take the eggs. Dont' subsidize other peoples' breakfasts!

People will pay $3.50/dozen around here without batting an eye. Eggland's Best Cage Free cost at least that in the grocery store.

 

[fortcypher]

MGFarm,

Just reading this thread and wanted to thank you for your post. My 10 year old son has wanted an egg business for two years and we finally agreed! But we have been told time and time again that he will not make any money from the business. We were starting to worry. I appreciate your daughter's story. It is hard work, but we are willing to support him and help him market creatively. I don't want to discourage the boy's entrepreneurial spirit. We are starting him with 15 Golden Comets and 5 Araucanas. Maybe it will grow bigger if all goes well. Right now we have 5 households in the family and 4 outside customers that are excited to help him get started by buying. Any helpful suggestions for a new business?

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

MGFarm,

Just reading this thread and wanted to thank you for your post. My 10 year old son has wanted an egg business for two years and we finally agreed! But we have been told time and time again that he will not make any money from the business. We were starting to worry. I appreciate your daughter's story. It is hard work, but we are willing to support him and help him market creatively. I don't want to discourage the boy's entrepreneurial spirit. We are starting him with 15 Golden Comets and 5 Araucanas. Maybe it will grow bigger if all goes well. Right now we have 5 households in the family and 4 outside customers that are excited to help him get started by buying. Any helpful suggestions for a new business?

I know you meant this for MGM farm, but I thought I'd chime in since we sell most of our eggs to a local grocery store and do make a small profit. My #1 piece of advice is: Do It Right. Don't think, well, we're tiny so we don't have to follow rules, Do It Right. Now, all my advice is applicable only to Ohio, because that's where I know the laws. You'll need to look up your own laws in PA.

I would recommend that you keep your egg business separate from your home accounts. It cost very little to incorporate a business name in most states, and you run the farm taxes in with your personal taxes--just declaring agricultural profit/loss on the additional worksheet. You will be allowed to deduct losses on your federal taxes for three years, but then the IRS wants to see a profit or you don't qualify as a business. Having an actual business allows you to be exempt from sales tax on things that are directly used in producing and selling eggs, including birds, cartons, feed, and equipment.

In Ohio, there are specific requirements on what must be on the egg carton to sell eggs, and what can't be there. This makes it very difficult to re-use egg cartons from the store, so we buy blanks and use our home printer to print labels that are strips of paper we glue to the cartons with a glue stick. A bit time intensive, but it looks really nice and the grocery store tells us that our eggs are packaged the most attractively, and sell better because of that.

We have to keep eggs below 40 degrees F, and have a thermometer in our fridge to prove that. In the summer, we have to deliver eggs in a cooler with a thermometer inside.

We also have to keep records of how many eggs we pack. We just run an excel spreadsheet that tracks number of eggs laid, number of eggs packed, number of eggs sold. These dont' always directly correlate, because more eggs are laid than packed (some are too large, some have a weird shape, some are too bumpy and ugly, some are cracks) and before the we got the store contract, more were packed than sold (and the extra went to a local food bank, and since we're a business we could write the donation off on our taxes).

Keep all your chicken money in a separate bank account. Most banks have free business banking. Then it's really easy to see if you're making more than you spend! Also, keep each and every receipt, no matter how small. You'll need them to do your taxes. Expect that your first year, you won't make any money. It's almost impossible to do so, since you've just spent money on chicks that will need to eat for 19 weeks before the possibility of a single egg. In subsequent years, winter will hurt because you're spending 2-3X the money on feed that you did in the summer (if you're free range) and you'll need lots more bedding, too. We have to keep a carry-over in our farm checking account from summer to carry us into the winter, or else we'd be in the red.

When pricing eggs, look at EVERY SINGLE THING that goes into making them. Cost of chicks and shipping. Gas to pick up started birds. Feed. Water. Food dishes. Egg cartons. Electricity to brood chicks. Vaccinations. Dewormer. Egg soap. Bedding. Gasoline to go to the feed store and buy feed. Mortality from disease or predators. It costs us, all told, around $2.70/dozen to make a dozen eggs. That's amortized over the entire year and the chicken's entire life, since hens are very expensive when young (lots of feed, no eggs) and in the winter (lots of feed, reduced laying, electricity for lighting, extra bedding). Never sell eggs for less than they cost you to produce. We sell our eggs for $3.50/dozen or $3/dozen if you buy more than four dozen. The store sells them for a lot more, and we have one lady who buys 8 dozen at a time and then resells them for $4/dozen home delivery to a few people. We break even if we sell 10 dozen a week at $3/dozen, and anything on top of that is the cream. So there's not a huge profit, but there is enough of a profit to let us basically keep hens and eat all the eggs we want for free.

The best thing to do is figure out a way that you're selling a guaranteed number of eggs a week. For us, the grocery wants a minimum number, up to as many as we can bring them ( I know, nice, right?). We also have weekly and bi-weekly customers that we just bring them a dozen on a certain day of the week, or every other week. Those folks are gold. People that just order when they feel like it are nice, but don't base your hen numbers on them. Fulfill your standard orders first, then sell to more casual customers if you have the eggs.

Hope there's at least something useful in there. Good luck, it can be done!

 

[fortcypher]

Thank you so much! I did read the rules for selling in PA on the Penn State Ag Extension page. Sounds very similar to what you all have in Ohio. I run a Mary Kay business, so I'm used to the separte accounts and extensive tracking/receipt saving. I just hadn't thought about that for him. But so valid and important. I'll have to ask my tax prep lady how it works with the farm thing. He got most of his feeders/brooder/waterers for birthday presents (the poor kid really wanted them!) But there is so much more to come Thanks for the encouragement to treat it like a "real" business.