The Homegrown Vendor Blog

Selling out early feels great — until you realize you're leaving thousands in missed revenue. Here's your playbook for raising prices, taking pre-orders, and turning sellouts into all-week sales.

Most vendors who offer pre-orders get fewer than 10% of customers to use them. Here are the signs, scripts, incentives, and timing that push adoption to 40-50%.

You have 12 things you could make, but you need to show up with 4. This decision framework walks you through cottage food laws, the 3x pricing formula, the anchor-impulse-seasonal product mix, and how to test products before committing — so your first market day is focused, legal, and profitable.

Learn how to move past friend sales with real pricing, a simple ordering system, and a playbook for finding your first 5 customers who are not your friends.

Turn your Saturday regulars into between-market online buyers. Start with a clipboard, a weekly text, and a simple ordering link.

Start with cash and a free Square Reader. Compare fees for Square, SumUp, Venmo, CashApp, and pre-pay — with real cost breakdowns for small vendors selling $300-$1,000/week.

The complete first-time farmers market vendor checklist — organized by category with booth essentials, payment tools, food safety supplies, display items, marketing materials, comfort items, and emergency backups. Built for small food vendors loading everything into a regular car.

Running pre-orders alongside walk-up sales at the farmers market takes a simple system. This guide covers the 60/40 inventory split, order cutoffs, packing and labeling, pickup logistics, and what to track each week.

Your first week as a farmers market vendor is about preparation, not perfection. This guide walks you through everything to do before, during, and after your first market day — from packing the right supplies and setting up your booth to tracking what sells and building a customer list for next week.