Sweet 'n Fresh

At The Farmers Markets

Excerpt from Fruit Grower Magazine, October 1999

Selling State-Of-The-Art Freshness
For Art Lange, owner of 15-acre Honey Crisp Farm near Reedley, CA, farmers markets are an essential ingredient in a unique operation. For eight months of the year, he and several family members are on the road selling at farmers markets in Los Angeles area markets from May to August and then to Bay Area markets from October to January. All of the markets are at least a 4-hour drive away.

On his small farm, Lange raises 3000 to 5000 boxes of fruit per year from more than 200 varieties of fruits. He is able to plant so many varieties on small acreage by utilizing "hedgerow" planting and with dwarf-size trees.

About half of Lange's fruit is sold to high-end restaurant distributors who can resell tree-ripe fruit. "Everybody advertises tree-ripe but I consider tree-ripe ready to eat," Lange said. "When you buy from me you can take a bit out of it and it tastes good!"

Some of the restaurants also order from Lange at the farm for pick-ups at the market. "They don't get a special price at the market if we're in low supply," Lange said. "The price depends on supply and demand and quality." Fruit is picked and packed inthe field directly into a Panapack in the box.

"Our expenses for picking are phenomenal," Lange said, "but our quality is also phenomenal!" Pickers go up and down the rows looking for the right degree of ripeness. Most fruit is picked commercially up to a week to 10 days early for the supermarkets. Lange's neighboring growers pick the same variety often 10 days earlier than he does.

For Lange, selling to both farmers markets and restaurants is a balancing act. "We've tried to sell to one or the other but it doesn't work," he said. "If the fruit is too ripe the customers love it, but if it's a little too green the wholesalers will accept it because they're used a to a lot greener. So we can pick the fruit a little greener for the wholesalers. Let's say we have a bumper crop of Babcock peaches -- a fantastic peach but which has such a short shelf life you can't sell very much of it to the jobbers. The jobbers will try to bring you down on your price, but if you're getting $2 a pound for the fruit at the farmers markets, you don't have to sell it at for $1 a pound to the wholesalers." Most of Lange's fruit sells for about $2 a pound and up at the farmers markets, and about $1.75 to the jobbers.

Among Lange's specialties are heirloom varieties of white peaches and nectarines that he says are extremely good but very fragile. He is also excited about some new varieties. "The sweetness is phenomenal on some of the new experimental varieties," Lange said. Among the most promising new varieties, he said, are Snow Candy and Snow Dance peaches, Arctic Pride nectarine, and the Arctic Star white nectarine.

The key to selling tree-ripe fruit at the farmers markets is sampling. "A lot of fruit looks alike, and most people can't tell how it tastes just by looking at it. You have to let them know how much better it is than the supermarket. Most customers don't want to pay $2 or $3 a pound, but once they taste it they can't resist."

Since it's illegal in California to handle money and cut samples, Lange gets around this by placing a slotted box at this booth where customers can drop their money. Customers pick out their own fruit and pay by the piece -- three plums for a dollar or one peach for a dollar. In case a customer wants to know how much the fruit costs per pound, there is a scale to weigh it for them. "At most markets the people are very honest," Lange said. "My system is also faster; I can sell as much as two or three vendors selling who have to weigh each purchase and handle money."

"Tree-ripe tastes so much better than 'brown, bag-ripened fruit.' Customers come back again and again," Lange said. "They really like it soft but not too soft. It's a challenge!" Since some customers poke something and take the one next to it, Lange's booth has signs: "Very ripe and soft fruit," "Do not squeeze fruit!" or "Squeeze my fruit and you get no fruit!"