122 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



you don't want, or in a manner which you don't want, or done 

 up in a package which does not suit you. So, therefore, if you 

 are selHng apples, you should consider who these consumers 

 are, and what they want. 



Consumers may be divided into a very few classes, which 

 we might call the wholesale consumers, i. e., buying in a whole- 

 sale way — and the retail consumers. Let us take first the 

 retail or family trade. The family trade in the city, say 80 

 per cent of that family trade is from the working class, earn- 

 ing $15 a week and under. The kind of apples they want to buy 

 are these : First, apples for cooking, for instance Baldwins or 

 Greenings ; second, apples for eating, such as Mcintosh or 

 Gravenstein. The average consumer in the city does not 

 want to buy a barrel of any one kind, for in the first place they 

 have not any place to store those apples, and in the second place 

 they do not want so many of one kind. The majority of the 

 apples sold to the family trade are sold in peck or half peck lots. 

 The household will order a peck or half a peck of Baldwins or 

 other apples for cooking apples, and say a dozen of Mcintosh 

 for eating. Some other member of the family does not like Mc- 

 intosh, so he orders half a dozen Gravensteins. That is the 

 way the trade has been built up, selling the consumer what he 

 wants and when he wants it. 



Now we come to the wholesale trade, which is the great 

 buyer of your apples, that is — hotels, restaurants, boarding 

 houses, cafeterias, institutions. What kind of apples do these 

 consumers want to buy ? The restaurant keeper wants to buy a 

 very nice grade of apples to put in his window to attract the 

 people, the very nicest looking apples he can buy ; second, he 

 wants to buy a pretty good apple that he can use for a baked 

 apple, but it can have some spots or specks, because he can cut 

 those out and when brought on the plate the consumer won't 

 notice it. Now then, for his apples to make sauce and pies, he 

 wants to buy the cheapest apples that he can, because he is in 

 business to make the most money he can. So for an apple 

 to use in apple sauce and apple pies he will take most anything 

 he can get. If we had some fine apples cooked and apples that 

 didn't look so well cooked in apple sauce, I think we would have 

 a very hard time telling the difference. This shows the three- 

 fold wants of the restaurant keeper. 



