- 3 



MacQueen opens his apple orchard to pick-your-own customers about 

 October 10, after harvesting his Jonathan and Red Delicious. He has 

 25 acres of apples and charges $2.25 per bushel, the main varieties con- 

 sisting of Rome, Baldwin, Wagner, and Winesap. 



W. W. Magill, retired Kentucky Extension Horticulturist, related 

 his experiences and success with pick-your-own peach marketing. He 

 pointed out that customers will not break any more trees and branches 

 than most hired pickers. He finds that most customers pay the same price 

 for peaches either off the tree or the ground. 



Ralph Folsom, Belief ontaine, Ohio grower, markets five acres of 

 small fruits and 30 acres of orchard on a pick-your-own basis. He ob- 

 tains 25<: per quart for his strawberries and in his outstanding straw- 

 berry patches gets 3 5<!: per quart on a pick-your-own basis." 



Case Study of a Roadside Market 



Two Ohio State University students, Mitchell Lynd and Thomas Bennett, 

 presented findings of their case study of the Lynd roadside market located 

 on Route 40 east of Columbus. (The Lynd market handles 400 to 450 dif- 

 ferent items - spending about 1.6% of gross sales for advertising.) They 

 jotted down license plate numbers of all customers stopping at the market 

 between July 27 and September 1 and obtained the adresses of these indiv- 

 iduals from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles and mailed a questionnaire to 

 them. 



Questionnaire replies revealed that 74% of the customers stopping at 

 the market learned about it through roadside signs. During the period 

 of the survey, customers from 31 states, the District of Columbia, and 

 Ontario, Canada visited the market. The majority of the consumers came 

 from the eastern part of Ohio. The majority of out-of-state customers 

 came from Pennsylvania, New York and California - in that order. 



The survey revealed that people living closer to the market stopped 

 more often. Likewise the average purchase for city people (those indiv- 

 iduals living in a city of 10,000 or more) was 27% higher than for rural 

 people. The questionnaire requested the customers to rate the market 

 on freshness of product, cleanliness, quality of product, flavor of prod- 

 uct, appearance of product, selection of product, friendliness of sales- 

 men, prices and interest to market. It was interesting to learn that 

 everything rated higher during the week days than on the weekends. This 

 is probably partially related to the increased activity from heavy week- 

 end sales when customers received less personal attention. 



A portion of the questionnaire obtained information from the cus- 

 tomers about their attitude towards farm markets in general. Reasons 

 listed why people go to farm markets were fresher produce, good selection, 

 cheaper prices, better quality, homelier atmosphere, better attention by 

 salesmen. The people also replied they would stop at farm markets more 

 often if (1) they were closer (this would indicate a demand for more farm 

 markets), (2) they had more money, (3) there was more selection besides 

 fruit and vegetables, (4) signs appeared earlier, and (5) prices were 

 well displayed. Some criticisms listed for farm markets in general were 

 (1) many not clean and unattractive, (2) many sales people know nothing 



