Business Management of the Fruit Plantation. 205 



Section 1 — The Marketing of Fruit 



3 It. The commercial outlets for fruit. Fruit is com- 

 monly sold by the grower through one of three chan- 

 nels: (a) To the consumer, (b) to the fruit dealer, and 

 (c) through a middleman who receives the fruit from the 

 grower and sells it for a commission (commission mer- 

 chant). If the party purchasing or receiving the fruit is 

 located sufficiently near the fruit plantation, the fruit may 

 be delivered to him by wagon; otherwise it will have to 

 be delivered to a transportation company for shipment. 



318. Selling to consumers. The best prices may gener- 

 ally be secured by selling directly to the consumer, especially 

 if the fruit is choice and the purchaser is able to pay a 

 *' fancy " price. The amount of fruit that can be sold by 

 this method is, however, as a rule, comparatively small, 

 and the time required to make the sale and delivery is 

 relatively large. The largest outlets for fruits by this 

 method are commonly through boarding-houses, restaur- 

 ants and hotels. 



319. Selling to dealers. By this method larger quanti- 

 ties of fruit may commouly be sold for a given effort than 

 by selling to the consumer, but the prices are usually 

 lower. Some growers attempt to sell their choicest fruits 

 to consumers and those of medium quality to dealers, but 

 the two methods are not apt to work well together, as 

 dealers usually object to the grower selling his fruit to 

 consumers. 



In sections where insufficient fruit is grown to fully 

 supply the local demand, a large shipping trade may often 

 be developed with dealers in neighboring towns. A list 

 of such dealers may be procured through transportation 



