Ordering tips for stalls
- To help you order the correct amounts for a weekly stall it is a good idea to try to keep a record of items sold each week, for example by writing down customer orders or weighing trays of produce before and after the food co-op.
- This will give you an indication of the pattern of people’s purchases and preferences. However, inevitably your sales will vary from one week to the next due to factors such as the weather.
- School holidays or other events may also affect your sales, so during these periods you may need to order far less than normal.
- It is often better to under-order rather than over-order – so that you will sell out rather than have waste.
- Another good tip, especially if you only have a small number of customers, is not to order too many similar types of produce.
- For example, it is unlikely that people will buy several different types of cabbage. So if you have just a few customers, you could sell one sort of cabbage each week, rather than red, white and Savoy cabbages, and change the variety from week to week.
- That being said, it’s also important that you provide customers with enough choice and variety. This is also important when running a bag or box scheme where you are deciding the contents.
