Jenny (00:28)
Welcome back to another episode. Today I am sitting down to chat with my friend Rebecca of Moonshot Farm and we're talking all about success with farmers markets. But even if you don't sell through a farmers market, there are some really good golden nuggets of information in this episode with Rebecca. Now, she probably doesn't need any introduction. However, if you don't know Rebecca, her and her husband own Moonshot Farm in New Jersey.
and they actually left New York City after a decade of living there in 2019 to start their flower farm in New Jersey. And they actually farm year round. So in late 2022, they added a geothermal greenhouse to their farm, which has been super cool. I saw it in person and saw them growing some really cool things in there last year. But this has allowed her to grow and harvest flowers.
52 weeks a year and she sells those through her farm stand at local farmers markets and a bouquet of the month flower CSA. And I'm really honored to have Rebecca on the podcast today because I've been so impressed with her and her husband Mark. They have very quickly scaled up their farm and Rebecca is just like impressingly knowledgeable about production, pest and disease and
slinging flowers at farmers markets. So there's so many good things we talked about today about selling and preparing for markets and this really applies to a lot of different sales outlets. So I'm really excited for you to listen. So let's get into it.
Jenny (02:06)
Welcome, Rebecca. So excited to have you on the podcast today.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (02:10)
Thanks so much Jenny, I'm so excited to be here. I love your podcast.
Jenny (02:14)
Thank you. That's awesome. You are also the host of the Growing for Market podcast. we are both, I don't even want to say experienced podcasters because I don't feel experienced at all and I have no idea what I'm doing. But I was on the Growing for Market podcast and I was just telling you, it feels like deja vu because we kind of like did this not that long ago, but our roles are reversed today.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (02:35)
Yeah, it's fun to kind of do that from the other perspective. So thanks for having me.
Jenny (02:39)
Yeah, I'm excited to interview you instead of hearing you interview other people. So let's just jump on in. Can you just tell us a little bit about you and your farm and what you guys do?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (02:52)
Yes, so I'm Rebecca Kutzer-Eis and I own Moonshot Farm here in central New Jersey. That's about an hour from New York City and an hour from Philly and a pretty high cost of living area. So we're near Princeton, New Jersey and it's really prime farmland here. And I own the farm with my husband Mark and we're both full-time employed by the farm. And we grow about six or seven acres of cut flowers here.
We grow flowers year round, so pretty much 52 weeks a year we're harvesting something and we have, we actually have around a dozen employees now. We have around nine people on the staff at the farm and then we have some farmers market workers and an office manager. So I guess we've kind of grown pretty rapidly. We started just in 2019. We moved here from New York City and
Our scale has pretty much doubled every year. So here we are in 2025 and it's sort of become, I guess, a midsize commercial farm.
Jenny (03:56)
Yeah, I think that what you guys have done is really unique. think mostly because you have scaled so quickly. It seems like most farms just take a while to get to that point, especially flower farms. A lot of flower farms are very small scale, but what was it like scaling your farm that quickly? Like how did that feel when you're like jumping from a little farm to that mid-sized farm so quickly?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (04:26)
It was pretty stressful, but really fun. I like to joke that my husband and I are both big risk takers. So I think any farmer probably should be, but we like to party and go to the casino. And I think that the farm kind of took on our big risk taking personality outlet. So it was kind of like, if one of us said jumps, then we would just kind of jump into it. I also want to say, I worked an off farm job for the first
Jenny (04:27)
Yeah
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (04:55)
Several years, I quit that in 2022 and that was like a well-paid full-time remote off-farm job. And so having that kind of as our safety net was definitely crucial. It's not like we just woke up one day and decided to do this. It took a while before we could make that leap to being full-time on the farm.
We also got a lot of grants and loans to build the business. So I'm talking, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants and loans. So we definitely didn't just kind of build it out of thin air either. But it's been fun to grow it really fast. Here in New Jersey, it's a very expensive place to live. Our property taxes alone are like $20,000 a year on the farm. So the farm pretty much had to get to a
a bigger scale in order for us to have it be our full-time job. So that's kind of why we aimed big and that's the origin of our farm. We said we were shooting for the moon and so that's why we came up with Moonshot Farm. Because if this was going to be a full-time job for both of us, it was going to have to be pretty big to support that.
Jenny (05:58)
Yeah, absolutely. So when you were first starting out, did Mark also have, I know he was like construction or something. Didn't he, did he just like jump right into being on the farm fall time too? Or was that a juggling act for both of you guys for a while?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (06:11)
So he jumped right in. We moved here from New York City while he was still on paternity leave with our first born baby. She was around four or five months when we moved out here. And so he was kind of a stay at home dad slash full time farmer for those initial years. And now is full time salaried on the farm as well. having him being able to build the farm, take care of the baby, help build the employees out also was really critical.
Jenny (06:40)
I just want to say, I think it is so incredible that you built this business with a little baby. Tim, I actually recently had a conversation with Michelle Elston about this. I feel like we could have a whole podcast about like babies and farming, but like, I see you and I'm so impressed that you guys built this farm while juggling family. And like, I had a family after my farm was already established and like there is.
challenges that come with both of those, but like, can't imagine doing it the way that you did balancing babies and, and building a business, like, cause a business it's like your baby. requires that much effort and research. And it's just, I'm so impressed by you. just wanted to tell you that.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (07:27)
Well,
I just want to acknowledge like for anybody out there, it was really hard. It wasn't like we did it all and had it all together. Like there was a lot of exhaustion, burnout, drama in my marriage. It's not like, I think sometimes especially on social media, it looks so pretty and beautiful with the babies in the field. We had a lot of childcare. We now have two kids and then we have like extensive childcare for them both.
Jenny (07:32)
Yeah.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (07:55)
Don't be fooled that it was like a walk in the park and if somebody out there is really struggling with that, I think we all are. And you have a baby now too, so it's a lot. It's really hard and at the same time it's great because you get a really flexible lifestyle. If it's the Halloween parade at 12 o'clock on a Tuesday at school, I can be there, but it wasn't without a lot of sacrifices.
Jenny (08:20)
Yeah, I just, anybody who's listening, just take what Rebecca just said and like, keep repeating it yourself. Like this is hard. Nothing about flower farming is easy. So let's get back to talking about your business model because you said that you have this high cost of living, $20,000 a year in taxes on your property alone. That is crazy. And so you had to make some decisions in your business to like, you've really had to make this work for both of you full time is.
That why you, well before I ask you that, what are your main sales outlets and how did you land on those?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (08:57)
So, well, spoiler alert, I think we're really gonna focus on talking about farmers markets today. And my primary sales outlet by far are farmers markets. So we sell about 85 % of our business currently is farmers markets. And that includes two very large farmers markets in New York City. Those are some of the largest farmers markets in the country, I believe. And then a more suburban farmers market here in New Jersey. And then we also have a CSA.
We have around 200 members in there depending on the season. And then we also have a farm stand at our farm that's pretty small. It's just open once a week. We don't sell anything to florists, at least sort of wholesale or pre-order pricing. The decision there was that we really wanted to get the highest price that we possibly could for our flowers. I also find it really stressful to deal with florists. I hate...
promising flowers a week or two weeks ahead. We did that early on and it really, would keep me up at night if then, you know, those flowers didn't bloom on time or I didn't have the quantity that I promised. I found that florists really wanted our best quality, our best flowers, but at like the lowest price. And that just didn't make a lot of sense to me. I love farmers markets because I don't have to pre-order or promise anything. I just,
bring what I have and it's very, very, very low like mental and intellectual stress and that's, I guess, at this point in life what I really need.
Jenny (10:34)
I feel the same exact way. I love farmers markets and I don't enjoy selling to florists for those reasons. but I, I think something that you said I want to reiterate is that you said you needed to get the highest price possible to make or to give your farm the biggest shot.
of success. And I think that is a key thing that is a theme I see recurring with a lot of flower farmers. And that was my approach as well. So you said that you go to farmers markets year round and you have two large markets particularly. How do you feel about producing and selling flowers year round to those farmers markets?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (11:14)
Well, it's pretty stressful just to sort of try to have product vary consistently all year round. But being a year-round farm kind of gave us the edge. So the farmers markets that we sell at in New York City are extremely competitive. In the summer, there's probably a dozen flower farmers there or more, especially at our Manhattan market. And many of them have been there for decades. I mean, I'm talking since like the 80s and the 90s. They've been there every week.
And so had I shown up as a pretty new, pretty small farm and said I wanted to come to the market with like sunflowers in July, there's no way that we would have gotten into those markets. But I said, I want to come in December and January with tulips and ranunculus when there were no other flowers available. So at both of those markets, we got accepted kind of tentatively as a seasonal vendor just for the winter.
And then the customer response was so great for our flowers that we were kind of allowed to then stay on year round. So getting our foot in the door, having that year round niche really set us apart and kind of allowed us to get into those spectacular markets. And then having flowers every week, all year has really improved customer retention, right? Because customers...
If you have to sort of woo them again every season and remind them who you are, I think it could be really tricky. That's not to say that you have to do that model. It's a kind of crazy model. But I think if you could be a few weeks earlier than everybody else, if you could be first to market with certain flowers, that it could really help drive customers to you.
Jenny (12:58)
Yeah, absolutely. So that is your competitive advantage that got you into those markets was being able to have this year round selling model. while we're on the topic of competition, I'm curious about.
how you deal with this highly competitive market because I know a lot of flower farmers complain that there is this increase in competition and they go to farmers markets and they've experienced, you know, like extreme price undercutting or other kinds of excessive competition. And so I'm curious about what other things you do that set yourself apart or how you deal with that kind of competition in your area.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (13:36)
So I'll be honest, that competition really stresses me out. I would love to say, I don't worry about it or have like a very Zen approach. I definitely try to project that and tell myself that, but like in my heart, it still kind of, you know, gives me a stomach ache. But it's just the reality of the marketplace. If folks don't know, New Jersey has the second highest
cut flower industry and floriculture only after California. So it's a huge, huge, huge market here. New Jersey has hundreds of flower farms, many within a five-mile radius of me. the competition's never going to go away. And I read something somewhere that was like, if there wasn't any competition, then you'd
that probably wasn't going to be a successful industry. know, like you don't want to open the first coffee shop in a town. They probably just don't have the market for it. So that is a little bit reassuring. But at end of the day, like there's nothing I can do about competition and other people and their prices and their flowers. All I can control is my own. So I really try to focus on having just like the best possible quality flowers. That's my niche.
And I think I'm sort of figuring out my own brand identity and ruthlessly sticking to that has been key in our success. I don't think that your brand has to be the best or the most expensive flowers. I think your brand could be really cheap budget flowers or it could be, you know, sunflowers or whatever. But for us, it's really high quality and sort of never wavering on that.
And that has then allowed us to get those customers that are really interested in quality. I don't really pay attention to other people's prices. I mean, obviously I look at them, I know what they're charging, but that's not how we're setting our prices. We're really focused on our own cost of production and making sure that we're making a profit. I think there is definitely a race to the bottom. But also like these farmers in New Jersey that farm,
Hundreds of acres of flowers have a lot of mechanization, have owned their land since generations past. Of course, their cost of production is going to be lower. And I don't think they're necessarily going to go out of business by keeping those low costs. But educating our customer about our flowers and what makes us different and kind of just sort of focusing on our own thing has been sort of the path to success. for example,
I could never grow sunflowers as cheap as my neighbors, right? I just don't have the equipment. I don't have the inexpensive labor. I'm never going to be able to grow like 10 sunflowers for $5, which is sort of a going price here, like 50 cents a stem. So we pretty much just don't grow sunflowers, at least for some of our markets where they have those really cheap stems. Because like, I'd love to say I can grow better sunflowers, but I can't. Their sunflowers look...
great, you know, they're harvested at the right stage, they're stored correctly, and they're the same pro-cut or, you know, horizon variety that I would grow. So why would I try to grow the same thing but charge like three times as much? It just doesn't make sense. So sort of cutting out the flowers that other people can grow cheaper than me and sort of focusing on the more unique varieties has been a path to success for us.
Jenny (16:57)
I love that. Now you said that you really try to educate your customer on your product. So you're growing these specialty cut flowers, super high quality. How do you go about educating your customer on those things? Do you talk to them at the market? Do you communicate with them apart from the market, like on social media, through an email list? Like how, what are some ways that you do that?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (17:21)
So I would say all of the above. We definitely talk to them at market. we have like really focused, my husband goes pretty much to all of our farmers markets in the city. And that's a piece of advice I would have if you can show up yourself or have a highly trained market staff who is educated about the product that can really help. We also try to use like informative signage. So.
An example is right now we have a ton of tulips. That's kind of our main crop this time of year. It's March here in New Jersey. there's a lot of other tulips at the market. And a lot of their tulips just say, you know, tulips. So we try to have on our signage sort of what sets them apart. So for example, we grow our tulips in a geothermal greenhouse. So at a minimum, we always say geothermal tulips. you know, if we have like peony tulips or...
We're always careful to write that on the signage instead of just writing tulip. And it really does make a big difference kind of having that informative, educating signage. Then we do have an email list. I try to send an email out every single week to our customers that is some sort of information about the farm or something we're up to that week.
The email last I just sent out last week was all about like the cost of tulips rising and all of the factors about that. Just to kind of draw people in and get them to know more about the farm and the story. And then finally, we do try to post really often on social media, especially like behind the scenes of our farm, get people excited to come out to market.
And I find those are all like very effective. The email list, I know that you talk a lot about that on your podcast. I think until recently, we would just send out occasional email blasts, like when we were having a sale or launching our CSA, but starting to send that weekly, like regular email that isn't trying to sell them something, but it's just trying to like inform them about something and educate them. It's been a huge game changer.
And the readership on the email list is huge. It's like 80 or 90 % of people open my emails and I get so many responses to them. And I find that when I send those emails out, our attendance at markets goes up much more. People are remembering that we're there. So I would really recommend that.
Jenny (19:46)
I love that. An 80 to 90 % open rate is like huge. That's fantastic.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (19:51)
It's crazy, right?
I know, it's really good. And I'll just add from like a logistics standpoint, we do have a QR code at our markets where people can sign up for our email. And we also have it set up. Well, this is a little tangential, but we use Square for all of our farmers market sales. And we, for the past maybe two or three years have been using the Square loyalty program.
which is basically a punch card in Square and every time somebody comes, they can enter their phone number and then you can give them rewards. So we call ours the Frequent Flower Miles program and they can, think it's every 11 times they come, they get the 12th bunch of flowers for free. I sort of crunched the numbers on that and that was sort of the frequency that made sense for us.
and they get an extra point if they give us their email and sign up for their email list. so people are like, everybody's signing up for the email list and it's been a really successful way to sort of retain those customers. And the loyalty program's really good. Square will give you metrics on that, but on average our loyalty members come like four or five times as often as people who aren't in that program and they spend like twice as much. The difference is really crazy. So that program has been really successful for us.
Jenny (21:13)
That's fantastic. I'm always telling people if you can like find some way to do that and incentivize people to come back, like those people really become like your flower people. And so that's amazing. I love that.
I am curious how many people scan your QR code at your farmers market, because that's something we've tried in the past. And it has been kind of a flop for us. We get way more people signing up for a list if we literally have a pen and paper, which sounds crazy and ancient, but it's true, asking them and then, of course, electronically as well. But do people actually scan your QR code?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (21:55)
Not a lot, maybe one in every like 15 or 20 people. The other thing about our markets is they're really, really busy. So especially in the city, we usually have a line, like rushing to check people out as fast as possible. And that's the great thing about that loyalty program, because they just enter their phone number quickly into the square when we're checking them out. Then they get prompted with a text to sign up for our email and get like that free point. So it sort of just speeds up the process.
Jenny (22:04)
Hmm.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (22:24)
Often, I think the text comes a little while after their purchase, so they're not rushing around the market. And that's another reason that's been really successful for us.
Jenny (22:33)
Really cool. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Can we?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (22:36)
I'll also just add,
just one more thing on the email. And my website is pretty terrible, so I don't necessarily recommend people signing up for it. And I also don't necessarily love when websites have this. we did have, we have a pop-up when you open our website to enter your email. And I guess maybe it's a little manipulative. You can just X out of it or click out of it really easily.
But I find that once we added that pop-up, we got so many more subscribers to our email. I think like Old Navy has that, like the big retailers all have that website pop-up. So it must work in the industry. We have that and it's like really increased our number of email subscribers.
Jenny (23:17)
Now, when you have the pop-up on your website, is it simply like a sign up for our email list or do you offer some sort of like, like you offer the extra point with your rewards program? Do you have a freebie or something like that? Or is it just sign up for our list?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (23:30)
I don't have a freebie at the moment. I think that's a great idea. and I think that's sort of the classic, like email marketing lead magnet. We don't have that. I think you should. It's a great idea. I just haven't kind of gotten around to building it. One thing I'll say is we try to like announce like offerings such as, know, CSA line sign up or wreath workshops are opening to our emails first. And so that's a little bit of an incentive to join. And so usually when I have that like.
click wrap for them to enter their email. It'll say, like, you know, sign up for our email to be the first to learn about X, Y, or Z. And that is like, that's why they're going to the website anyway. So that's an incentive.
Jenny (24:11)
Well, I just want to say too, you don't always have to have that freebie. If you're finding that just a pop-up and people just want to be on your email list and that works for you, that's awesome. I think that there's a big difference between.
Small local businesses and those big giant retailers. Sometimes like I had someone email me just this week and was like, Hey, I want to just sign up for your email list. Like, how do I do that? And like everyone, my website, I have like this to get on our email list. You have to sign up for the freebie and they're like, I don't want the freebie. I just want to like, know when you're going to be selling things. And I was like, huh, maybe like they just want to be connected to me because I'm like the small business that they have a real connection with. And so, I just want to say like,
that might just work for you, you know?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (24:57)
Yeah, that's a good point. I guess it's like, think about your customers too. Like if I was like, you you offer like peer to peer education. And so that could make a lot of sense that you could have some kind of free resource for other farmers. But I don't really, I don't know. I don't really offer like, or like if I was like offering to florists, I could have like a calendar of when my flowers are available, but I don't really know what my customers would be interested in. yeah.
Jenny (25:02)
Yeah.
Probably a discount
that you don't want to give out.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (25:24)
That's right. And you know, we really don't give out discounts because
I've read and this makes sense that if that's my lead magnet, if that's what I'm offering, then I'm attracting the cheapos that just are looking for a sale. So we don't do that.
Jenny (25:32)
Mm. Yes.
Yeah, I think that's another thing that let's talk about that real quick. because a lot of places use that as part of their pricing model is they kind of start out high, but then they dole out all these discounts from time to time, or maybe really often. Like Coles is a good example of that. If you've ever like shopped at Coles, know, anytime you go in there, if you like, don't have a 30 % off coupon, you kind of feel like you're being robbed, but.
You really like train your customers if you do that often to only buy when there is a sale. And so that's something that we, me personally, we only do sales if we have like a huge flush of something and we like need to move it. Otherwise we try not to like cheapen our brand. So it was kind of cool just to hear you say that you also don't really do that.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (26:24)
Same, totally. And just to tie it back to farmers markets, we also, you I know some vendors will after, you know, two o'clock discount all their flowers or their vegetables or whatever, but we never discount anything. find then people are just gonna be waiting around for the sale. It's just kind of cheapening the brand overall. We will give out a lot of free flowers. I think that is something we'll do all the time. So if we have like a regular, we know we're not gonna sell out that day. It's a rainy day.
Jenny (26:32)
Mm.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (26:49)
We'll hook them up. We'll give them an extra bunch. you know, we had Amaryllis this week for sale as cuts and they were pretty fragile. Some of them were harvested a little bit too late and we were charging an arm and a leg for them, but we also knew we weren't probably going to sell them all. So we were like, give it an extra. So if they bought one, we would give them another one. We didn't advertise that, you know, but.
If you get that free flower, if you get that free bunch, like that is your flower farmer now. You're going to go back. You love shopping there. So we find that that's a really great way to deal with like that abundance as well. Instead of advertising to attract, it's more like giving away to retain.
Jenny (27:23)
Yeah, I love that. And that customer experience piece of it is so valuable. So tell us a little bit more about what you do to enhance your customer experience at the farmers market. When people come to your booth, what would they expect?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (27:37)
Yeah, that's a great question. mean, it's often-
Pretty hectic, especially in the city. We try to have a huge abundance of flowers. So we try to have a really beautiful market display that will really drive people in. In fact, like whenever I get pictures of our stand, there's often somebody taking a picture of our stand in the picture. So we just try to have a really beautiful stand. People will like take selfies in front of it just to kind of enjoy the flowers. So even if they're not buying, they're like really attracted to it.
We try to have really good customer service. Everybody knows the answers to all the questions. We're always really sweet to dogs and babies. And we definitely have a ton of regulars at all of our markets and we learned their names and we know what they love. We love to, like when something's really special, to kind of point it out to those people and sort of steer them in the right direction. Because our market has
Jenny (28:16)
Yes.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (28:36)
like a very wide like customer base, I would say. So especially in Manhattan, you know, we have everybody from like the guy picking up flowers for his wife's birthday to we actually have a ton of event designers that will come and buy our flowers for an event like that day. You know, the flowers they bought from the wholesaler sucked or they turned out they needed a little bit more than they thought.
So we have a really wide range of stage of harvest at our market, which won't work for everybody. But for tulips, for example, there's a lot of very green tight tulips. And then there's also a lot of very open tulips for those event designers. But if we see the guy buy flowers for his wife, we might say, those flowers are beautiful. But if you want the longest base life, try to steer them towards something else.
Yeah, just like we always try to point out like kind of the secret special thing that we have to make people feel like special and like they're kind of getting the best of what we have that week.
Jenny (29:33)
I love that. I think it's so important, like you and Mark, think do a really good job of making your display. Like I've seen pictures of your display on Instagram. You make it look super abundant and it's like very open and very welcoming. And so people feel like they, you're very approachable. feel like, which is a really important thing for sales.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (29:54)
I think that's right. And we also put our prices on every bucket. So I know some farmers will just have like a little price sign off to the side. People do not want to ask you what the price is. It feels really uncomfortable. I don't want to ask somebody what the price is. So just having the price like really obvious, you know, maybe it doesn't look beautiful to have just like prices everywhere, but I think it makes the customer experience a lot less awkward.
Jenny (30:18)
We do the same thing. Every bucket has a sign, a little chalkboard sign that has something about it, like the name, whatever it is. And then below that is the price. I actually read this study. I don't, I probably shouldn't even say anything about it right now, because I'm not going to be able to quote like the actual study or what the statistics are. But in a nutshell, if you give just a little bit of information about what it is first, so you coming up with your creative names for your, like your geo, I shouldn't say
creative, but geothermal tulips. And then you have the price below that. There's like some crazy amount of increase sales that happen just because they learn something about the product before you put the price. And I did like some studying about that once, but anyways.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (31:05)
Like the names that you use on your signage will make a huge difference. I love to tell the story about daffodils, which we say is the D word on our farm. We don't ever use the word daffodil. So in I think like 2020 or 2021, we planted, you know, a ton of really fancy, beautiful daffodils. We harvested them all like very tight at that goose neck stage.
Jenny (31:09)
Yeah.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (31:28)
We brought them to market and we didn't sell any. They were all composted. It was a disaster. And then the next year, we actually harvested them a lot more open because look, farmers market customers are shopping by the eye. They're not necessarily thinking about these. They kind of just want a more open flower sometimes. So we would mix in the more tight ones with the more open ones. But it was a much more beautiful display. And we stopped using the word daffodil. We started calling them narcissists.
and everyone was freaking out about these beautiful narcissists. And they've never seen this flower before. What is this? This is amazing. It ended up being one of our top grossing flowers that year. We sold thousands of them. And so pretty much all we did was change the sign, and that was all that it took. using P &E Tulip or Dinner Plate Dahlia, those descriptions actually make a huge difference in how well the product sells.
Jenny (32:27)
Yeah, I have a quick story about that too. Actually, I want to share quick because I think it's funny that my, had a job working for another vegetable farmer years ago and he grew this most, the most beautiful. what is it? It's like,
Some it's like bok choy, but it's not quite bok choy. don't even remember the real name of it, but he could not sell it for the life of him. No one was buying it. And it was this like beautiful, delicious green and he grew really high quality. And so he just started calling it Asian, spinach, I think, I think it's just called the Asian spinach. And he just like made up this name and like immediately started like flying off the shelves. So like that happens in every industry. So love that.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (33:09)
Yeah, we make up names all the time, I will say.
I guess plant breeders don't necessarily like that, but we'll just completely rebrand something. There's a really pretty lily. The name of it is Tiger Woods. I don't know. Maybe he bought the name to that lily or something, but that's not necessarily the most attractive name. But one of my employees was like, this would be the perfect flower to bring to a pool party. So we rebranded them pool party lilies, and then they just sold so much better.
I guess, you know, if we are selling to florists, different story, but for the farmers market, kind of making up fun and interesting names can really like change it.
Jenny (33:46)
my gosh, I love that so much. Pool, I want to buy a pool party, Lily. Like, yeah, come on, that sounds amazing. Cool, that's awesome. So let's talk about, while we're talking about flowers that you're selling at the market, what are your top selling flowers that your customers love the most?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (33:49)
Right?
Yeah, so our approach to farmers markets is to have like, it's kind of like an 80-20. So we try to have like 80 % of one thing that we just have a ton of. And this also makes our farm a lot more efficient, a lot more profitable, because we're kind of focusing on that like one flower that month.
And then 20 % is kind of like the bits and bobs. And those keep it interesting. If the customer comes week after week after week, they might not want that 80 % every week. And that kind of also keeps our display a little more like unique and different. But having like a focus flower of the month has been really good for us. So this time of year, it's tulips. We have a pretty big tulip production. We force them from January through April when we have them in the field.
think we grew like 160,000 tulips this year. So we grow a lot of tulips. That's a really big winter crop for us. In the spring, we grow a lot of ranunculus and then we grow a lot of lilies, which I know are controversial. I like to think maybe this isn't true, but I like to think New York City is kind of like on the cutting edge of a lot of the trends. So I see lilies as getting more and more popular there every year. So I feel...
I'm excited that maybe that will kind of start spreading to the rest of the country and everybody else will be able to sell their lilies. But in the summer and the spring, lilies, especially like the big rose lilies, the double orientals are really popular for us. Lysianthus is our another like big summer crop. then asters are another really big summer crop for us. We grow a lot of asters and they make a beautiful.
like rainbow color display at the farmer's market. They have a great base life. We grow a lot of dahlias in the fall. We pretty much can't grow enough dahlias. We grow around three acres of dahlias. This year we're gonna sort of change our dahlias spacing and hopefully get a lot more out of that three acres. And then in the fall we grow a lot of heirloom and
non heirloom chrysanthemums. So those are kind of our top crops. They're also like our top grossing crops. Not necessarily most profitable crops, but they all are making a profit. So kind of for all of our like top 10 grossing flowers, we've done a lot of like crop costing and detailed cost of production analysis. So as long as I know that that like 80 % of my farm is profitable, then I'd
I don't feel too worried about doing all that detailed crop costing for that 20 % of other stuff that we bring.
Jenny (36:47)
Yeah. feel like your farm and my farm have a lot of similarities in how we like approach our production in terms of like that 80 20. I think it makes a lot of sense to do things like that. I'm surprised to hear you say that you grow that many Astors. Um, do you have any issues with like the Astor yellows or anything in New Jersey?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (37:06)
So I know people do. I guess before you start growing asters, I'd like look around at wild asters on your property and see how healthy they are. But we actually grow all of our asters inside high tunnels with insect netting. So in the summer, we put insect netting on the roll-up sides and the doors of our tunnels. And that really excludes the leaf hoppers that carry the aster yellows. It also helps your asters get like really tall. We'll get like three or four foot tall asters.
And yeah, they're just really popular and like in a month usually they bloom in August and everybody has sunflowers and gumfrina. So if we have like really special asters, it just kind of sets us apart and people, they're really sweet and romantic. People really like them.
Jenny (37:50)
I love that. So let's, I want to kind of switch gears here because I really want to pick your brain about how you sort of like plan and prepare and like execute all the preparation for your farmers markets. cause I feel like there's a lot of different ways that you can kind of approach that. So first of all, how far are you driving to your farmers markets?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (38:15)
So our farmers market here in New Jersey is just about 15 minutes. So that's super close by. Our farmers markets in New York City are around an hour when we leave in the morning to get there. They can be as much as like two or three hours on the way home because of rush hour traffic. If anybody knows like the, it's made the national news, but they've implemented some new tolls in New York City and that's actually completely eliminated that. So now the drive home is about an hour as well.
So TBD, if those are gonna stay or not. So that's a really big drive, obviously, but for us, it's definitely worth it.
Jenny (38:56)
So tell me again how many farmers markets do you do? You said you have two very large ones in the city and then the one in New Jersey that's 15 minutes from your house. Is that all, the three of those? OK.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (39:07)
That's right. Yeah.
the New York cities are, there's a Friday in Manhattan and a Saturday in Brooklyn. And then our New Jersey markets at the same time on Saturday in New Jersey.
Jenny (39:17)
at it. So when you are in the week coming up to those three farmers markets, do you have a plan as to like what you're going to harvest for those markets or do you just like harvest everything and try to divvy up where you're sending them? Tell us a little bit about your process with that.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (39:38)
So we are harvesting everything on our farm. I know it would be very different if we were like selling to florists and harvesting to order, but at the moment we can pretty much sell everything that we can grow. And the more we can bring to market, the more we can sell. Generally, I expect that we can sell 90 % of what we bring and that we're gonna come home with five to 10%. We find that just sort of no matter if we bring $1,000 or $10,000 that we're still gonna bring home that like
five-ish to 10-ish percent. And that's just because people don't want to buy that last little bit of product. So we always kind of think about our monetary target for the day. And that's based on what we need from a cash flow and a payroll perspective. I know we need to make X this week. We also look at the weather and kind of target it like that. So if Friday is going to be really rainy and Saturday is going to be a beautiful day, we'll maybe bring a little bit less on Friday.
On our Saturday markets, the New Jersey market definitely has, I would say, like a cap in terms of what we can expect to sell. So we'll always be sure to bring about five or 10 % more than that cap. And then every single other stem on the farm will go to our Brooklyn market where we do pretty much reliably sell out. I hate selling out. So last year we really struggled with this. Last year was our first year in the Brooklyn farmers market.
Um, it was actually kind of a crazy thing that happened. So we were accepted to sell there just for the winter. Um, so we'd been told you can't sell past March. Um, a returning vendor who'd been there, I think since like 1992, um, with his flowers was going to be returning in March. So we'd have to stop. And then sort of toward the end of March, we got a phone call that he had decided to retire and would we like his spot? Like obviously, yes, it was incredible opportunity.
But then we hadn't cropped planned for that. like April came, May came, June came, and we were really selling out. We just didn't have enough flowers. And it was pretty stressful to be honest. You customers were frustrated. The market was frustrated. We were able to sort of rapidly ramp up our production. And then sort of by like July and August, we had enough flowers to meet it. But even still, like even now, like certain holidays and stuff, we just kind of can't grow enough for that market. So
I would say we try to make sure we have enough for that market and then everything else we kind of divvy up based on what feels realistic in terms of sales. I want to talk about a little bit what we actually sell. So we pretty much only sell straight bunches. We don't do mixed bouquets anymore. When we first started, we did a ton of mixed bouquets. Beautiful designed mixed bouquets. I thought that was like our niche and what was really setting us apart.
But wow, it just took forever. And it would be like 10 or 11 o'clock the night before market. And I would still be out there like trying to make mixed bouquets. There would still be dozens of buckets of unprocessed flowers in the cooler. They would often like show up to market with those buckets because we just like didn't get around to getting everything into mixed bouquets. So sort of gradually, we just started offering just straight bunches.
They actually sold just as well as the mixed bouquets. I actually think that the market display looks a little bit tidier, like very like color blocked and neat. It's been a great way to sell our CSA. We say, if you want a mixed bouquet, join the CSA because people know they really can't get those at the market. And it's made like processing and preparing for market so much faster, so much more streamlined. We don't even really mix.
colors in bunches. So we just like do like, you know, eight of the same tulip in a bunch. And we find that people will often then buy like two or three bunches because they want that mix. And we actually sell a lot more flowers. Like they can still get a mixed bouquet by buying two or three or four different flower varieties. So when we stopped doing mixed bouquets, our average sale price actually went up and our time to prepare for market went way down.
Jenny (43:53)
Yeah, I do the same thing. I had the same experience. We used to do lots of mixed bouquets and then really got away from it. It is just such a huge time saver. And people, they're used to just buying straight bunches at other places, right? So why wouldn't you do that at the market?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (44:12)
Exactly. And so the only time we do mix bouquets is on holidays. So Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, and we make them really expensive, like $50, $75, even more. And we'll sell them all on those holidays. And it'll be worth it because it kind of will also help stretch our flowers out and kind of get the most bang for our buck on those holidays. But otherwise, it straight bunches all day. The one exception is that we do do
mason jars. And I want to like give you my little mason jar rant because I know a lot of flower farmers are doing mason jars and I feel like are like taking nice flowers and like cutting them up to put into mason jars. So the rule in our farm is and hopefully you know customers are listening to this but like we call them like trash jars. So it's basically flowers that are too short to be put in a straight bunch. So usually that's like under 10 inches and we have a little like guide in our barn.
And if it's under 10 inches, it gets shoved into a mason jar. And basically those flowers would probably end up in the compost anyways. They're too short to put into a sleeve and display in a bucket, but then put them in a mason jar and you kind of got new life out of them. So we never cut flowers down for jars. We just sort of shove whatever we have that's short, because there's always going to be short flowers on a flower farm.
And then we sell those for $30 for like a quart jar. And we sell them really well because they look really pretty and that's the only mixture that we have. But we are never ever, ever cutting flowers down for jars.
Jenny (45:42)
I hate mason jars.
used to do them, a kind of like similar thing to what you're doing. But we had all these issues where it was really my fault for not managing it better, I don't think. like when we get we get really windy days at our farmers market and it would literally like it will blow buckets with like half a bucket of water over sometimes. And clearly like those days are not great sales days for us, but we kept breaking jars on like windy days or like customers would drop them. And so we would have like broke
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (46:12)
no.
Jenny (46:16)
broken glass situation and so I swore off those a long time ago. I probably could have just gotten like a plastic one, but like I'm just curious if you ever have issues with like broken glass or is that just like a me problem?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (46:28)
So my husband's a carpenter and one of his great skills is kind of building different things for the farm. So you can probably find a picture of it on our Instagram, but he built these like canisters, I guess, for the mason jars or caddies, I guess. And I think they fit like eight or 16 jars. They're made out of wood and they look really cute. So we can just display them in there and they hold the jars really nicely on those windy days. Cause the city can be really, really windy. We actually broke a tent a couple of weeks ago in a windstorm.
Jenny (46:42)
Smart.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (46:57)
But those canisters hold the mason jars really, really well. And so we haven't had issues. On non-windy days, we'll pull them out and display them, but they look great in there. They look very full and abundant. so knock on wood. Occasional broken glass. We more have issues because we do sometimes sell single stems of stuff, usually real showstopper flowers, like a huge dinner plate dahlia or a remorhous, the huge foxtail lilies.
And those will display in like big glass vases and then sometimes they'll topple over. But so definitely have a broom on the market at the end to help sweep stuff up.
Jenny (47:36)
Do you find that making those mason jar bouquets, or not bouquets, but those mason jars is similar to making a mixed bouquet in terms of like the time that goes into it? Are you just like taking the shorty stems and like shoving them in there? There's no like recipe. Like, how do you do that?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (47:51)
We
pretty much just shove them in there. And that's also because I'm not so worried about over stuffing because they're like trash flowers. Like they literally are not gonna, they're like, we're not gonna sell them unless they're in the jar. And so we definitely over stuff them. Like if you were to like take them apart and figure out the florist recipe, you might be like shocked, you know, this is like so much cheaper. But for us, it's like, it's like kind of a win-win. Cause it looks really pretty. It's like abundant and they sell, but.
Jenny (48:00)
You
Hahaha
Mm-hmm.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (48:20)
like don't seem to sell like, like the straight bunches still sell much better. So we don't overthink it, I would say. We just kind of shove them in and move on.
Jenny (48:32)
I like that. think that's the only way I could probably get on board with doing them again, because I got angry at them one week, and I was like, never doing this again.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (48:39)
Yeah, and so sometimes we'll
set that caddy up or we'll have a shelf covered in jars and then as we're making bunches, as there's a short stem, we'll just shove it in the jar. My husband says in a carpentry shop, they have a shelf with scraps of lumber and we kind of treat the jars as that, like scraps just go into the jars instead of going somewhere else and that way too we're not handling it additional time.
Jenny (49:02)
I like that. Cool. Awesome. So when you're deciding how to divvy up how much product you bring to each, are you looking at just like, OK, let's say it's Friday or Saturday morning and you're going to load your vehicles to go bring your product. Are you basing what you bring to each market? Are you forecasting based off of previous sales, like the same week of last year? Or are you just kind of
dividing it equally and going from there.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (49:35)
We definitely look at the previous year, but we're always sort of on like trying to grow that by at least like 20 or 30 percent every year. So we look more at like our target, like how much do we have in the cooler and then how does that sort of play against the market? So usually I would say we would bring like 40 percent on Friday and then like 60 percent to our Brooklyn market on Saturday and then the remainders would go to our smaller market in New Jersey.
We also have different customer bases at those markets. And so we definitely try to keep that in mind. So for our Manhattan market, which is on Fridays, we have a lot of those event designers shopping with us. That's also our market with the most competition. So there's a lot of really cheap flowers there. So we always try to bring our really fancy stuff to that market. So if we have like those Labelle Epoch tool, those are going to go to that Manhattan market. Or if we just have like
like the brown, lizianthus, anything that's sort of very high end, unusual, a little bit different, you know, more expensive, it's going to go there because that's sort of the audience for it. Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, they love like wildflowers. We're the only like large flower farm there too. So like if we have like sunflowers or if we do have some like cheaper flowers like zinnias, we can sell all of that there because there's not a lot of other people that have it.
But they love like wild flowers. So sometimes we'll even harvest like actual wild flowers and they'll just, they'll sell cause people love that look in Brooklyn. But in New Jersey, people hate wild flowers because they just look like the weeds in their yard. It's a very suburban market. A lot of people have gardens. So if we try to bring like golden rod to New Jersey, it won't sell at all, but golden rod in Brooklyn is like really hot and trendy. So sort of knowing the customers at each audience at
Jenny (51:11)
You
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (51:29)
at each market also kind of determines what we're going to bring there.
Jenny (51:32)
Yeah, I think that's so funny that I feel like I talk all the time about your customers are going to be different from everybody else's customers. But within your little niche of those farmers markets, you have those different subsets of customers. So that's really interesting and kind of cool because you can use that to your advantage when you have other things that you want to get rid of. So that's cool.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (51:55)
Definitely. And there are sometimes like some disappointed customers like a cloney ranunculus. We can sell them in Manhattan for like $8 a stem. And I just can't sell that in New Jersey for that price point. And so I will bring all of them to Manhattan. They'll all sell out. And then my New Jersey customers might be like disappointed because they saw it on Instagram. But sometimes I'll just say, well, I just brought that to the city yesterday and like it was $10 a stem or whatever it was, you know, and then they'll be like,
Whoa, like nevermind, I'm happy. I'm happy with what you have. So kind of managing customer expectations can be challenging, but as long as you're like kind of honest with the reasons they tend to get it.
Jenny (52:23)
you
Yeah, absolutely. I think it just takes some experience getting to know your customers is I know at one point I was trying to grow a lot of those really fancy cloney varieties because I love them. My customers love them, but they were not willing to buy them for the price point I needed to make them profitable. So it's like, all right, we're just going to go back to the regular, like we grow a lot of the elegance varieties that are more affordable. And they were like really happy paying for that beautiful, vernacular at that price point that they felt like they could afford. And so it's like,
you have to know your customer.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (53:02)
Exactly. That's, think, the most important thing about selling on a farmer's market. think people think everybody at all farmer's markets are the same, but they're really different depending on where you are.
Jenny (53:12)
Yeah, absolutely. So I want to ask you just one more question about farmers markets pertaining to the support that you need to execute them well. So you have, you said before that you had about a dozen employees. How many of those employees are
helping you harvest and prepare for the market versus going to the market and like, are there any other kind of employees or tasks or positions that help support you in your farmers markets?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (53:45)
Yeah, so we have around, so we have nine employees on the farm and we have it kind of divvied into like a harvest and market prep crew and more of like a field work crew. But the day before market kind of everybody jumps onto that. So, but there's sort of three dedicated people that all that, pretty much all they do is like harvest and prepare flowers. And then the other four or five people will jump on kind of as needed, especially just for.
popping sleeves on bunches. So sort of the more experienced like flower bunchers will make the bunches and then those other staff will just pop them in the sleeves all day. And then for our markets, we have two farmers market employees that are in New York City and they meet us at the market. Typically for our Manhattan market, we just have one of them. But then for our Brooklyn market, which is bigger, we have both of them helping us. along with my husband. And what's nice about that is that
Once they're kind of set up and going and the morning rush has quieted, he can go and kind of take a little bit of time to relax. Our markets in the city are really long. They open at 8 a.m. and they close at like 4 or 5 p.m. And so it's like all day. And he has to usually leave here by like 5 a.m. So it's like a very, very, very long day for him. So if he can go and like get lunch with a friend, sometimes he'll go and get a massage.
Jenny (54:56)
wow.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (55:10)
That can be a really nice thing kind of in the middle of the day to just break up that really, really long market day. And then we have another staff member, all she does is our New Jersey market. And so she comes and she drives the product to the market and she runs the stand and then breaks down and brings the flowers back. So it takes a lot of people. We're also really working toward having my husband get at least one weekend off a month now. So.
One of our workers has now been trained on how to drive. We have a truck now, so he's been trained on how to drive the truck to market and then he can meet those employees that are in the city and my husband can not have to do that. So we're sort of aiming to have that one weekend off for him a month, because it's a pretty intense schedule to do this. We go to market around 50 weeks a year and so it's pretty intense to do that every week. So trying to get him to have that time off.
I want to talk a little more about sort of the numbers for all of this because I think I know that that's sort of what your podcast is focused on. So a figure I really try to keep in mind is that all of our costs to go to market. So that's our tolls, which is a big one in this area, our gas and mileage, all of our wages, including my husband getting paid like at least 20 to $30 an hour for his time has to be
Jenny (56:09)
Yeah.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (56:35)
less than 10 % of our market sales and ideally more like 5%. And that number is working out for us right now. And if it was a lot more than that, then I would deeply consider if that market was worth the time. Here, I think a florist is going to expect at least 30 % or maybe even 40 % less than retail. There's a lot of flower co-ops in our area, and they are all charging 20 to 30%.
to be in the co-op sort of off the price of your flowers. So if we're able to get our like all of our costs under 10%, I feel like we're getting like a very good profit margin for us. And our time preparing I think is actually less than it would be because of like to sell to a florist because we're doing all straight bunches. Everything would have to get bunched for the florist anyway, but there's no back and forth communication. There's no availability list. There's none of that.
If we're able to do all the same amount of prep work, but keep it under 10 % usually more like 6 % Then I'm really happy and just sort of one final thought on all of this because this is new But we've just hired a new market lead for our New Jersey market and we're trying out a sales commission this year So she gets paid like in my opinion a very competitive hourly wage and then she's also getting a percentage of our sales and I think this is great because she's
doing the market herself, she's owning it, she's in charge of everything. So she's now much more motivated for us to have a really good day. Because I do think that that person makes all the difference just in how engaged they are with customers. Are they on their phone? Are they sitting down? So if she's engaged and excited and sort of has skin in the game, and we've only been doing this for a couple of weeks, but so far I'm really excited by that idea.
Jenny (58:28)
That's really interesting that you say that because it's something that I've thought about implementing on our farm too, because I have one full-time employee who does our market for us. I don't really go that often anymore. And so she's really become the face of our business. And we've really thought about doing this commission thing. However, one thing that's really held me back from doing it is we do have some days every year where it's just like,
awful weather, nobody comes, it's like a total flop. And I'm always like, you know, Rebecca is not gonna like make any commission or hardly anything on those days. And so I've just like, that reason has always stopped me from pursuing that more. So I'm curious about like, I love the idea of it. And I think it's beneficial for both you and your employee. But like, do you
Do you find that that's an issue that you have to navigate? Or not really? I'm asking for my very own personal knowledge here.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (59:26)
guess the flip side of that is then think about how big of a commission they're going to make, like Easter weekend or Mother's Day weekend. I mean, at least for us, that's going to be hundreds of dollars extra. So I feel like, yeah, there's going to be those bad days. We don't do this currently, but we have discussed some kind of inclement weather bonus or something, because we do markets year round. So that means sometimes it's literally 20 degrees outside. And so that person has to stay out all day. So we don't do it right now.
Jenny (59:31)
Hmm, that's true.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (59:56)
I have, we have sort of bounced around the idea. So maybe that's an option. If it's like a pouring rainy day, you know that she's going to get 50 bucks or whatever it is.
Jenny (1:00:04)
Hmm. Yeah. I never really thought about that. I was just thinking about like the negatives, but like, makes sense. Like on Mother's Day, they're going to get like a massive check. So yeah.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (1:00:12)
Exactly. So I feel
like it evens out. And by the way, I didn't say this, but I'm a huge believer that you got to go to market no matter what, like rain or shine, brutally hot, know, wind, you just have to be there because if you're not there, then your customers won't be there. The only time that we miss is if it's really going to be like under 22 degrees. That's usually our cutoff at the warmest point of the day. So if it's like 1 p.m. and still just 22 degrees, we probably will miss market. And that's just because the flowers just can't.
Jenny (1:00:21)
Yeah.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (1:00:42)
handle it. But otherwise, we're there. We've even brought snow shovels to shovel out our market stall. People are hyped by it they see you there and they know that you're hardcore and they want to support you.
Jenny (1:00:54)
Yeah, that consistency is super important for that customer trust and loyalty and it really makes a difference. So, Rebecca, is there anything else that you have on your mind that you think you want to share about farmers markets or the profitability of farmers markets or anything about this?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (1:01:13)
I guess I just want to tell you that we haven't like, we have some really great farmers markets now, but there are farmers markets that we've tried out that just didn't work. There was one farmers market that we were attending. think our worst day there, we made $40 in like an eight hour day. It just wasn't our audience. And it was kind of hard to accept that we did it for a season and then we're like, this is just a waste of our time. And that's part of why having that like.
Jenny (1:01:22)
Yeah.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (1:01:38)
5 % or 10 % metric in your head, I think can help you decide if this is really worth your time. In my opinion, in 2025, if there's a farmers market that doesn't have a flower farmer, it's probably not a good farmers market for you to be in. At the same time, it's really hard to have competition. Most people aren't going to like multiple flower farmers on one market day.
But maybe waiting for that farmer to retire or maybe going for like a shoulder season when that farmer isn't there could be a good option. But there's a lot of markets that probably can't sustain a high value, high quality flower farmer and that's okay. So just like recognize it. And if somebody out there is listening and really struggling with a farmer's market, drop it and find a different one. You might have to drive, but maybe it could be worth it.
And then finally, I just want to say we don't do any like pop-up markets, like art markets or like Christmas fairs or anything like that. We tried those early on and we just found we could never make money, sort of no matter how big and successful and popular they seemed. just, like craft fairs, it just seems like people aren't there to buy fresh flowers and we just never had luck with them.
Jenny (1:02:57)
Yeah, I think that experimentation part and like really doing your research helps a lot. Not like you said, not all farmers markets are created equal and it really depends on the market and the market manager. Like there's markets, like there's a huge market near me in Rochester that they just allow anybody to come and they can resell stuff so they can like buy stuff and resell it. and like that would like not be a good market for me, but the market we do go to is
only producer based, like you have to sell what you grow. You can't resell, you can't buy things in and resell them. So it's like all farmers. And, I think just like really looking at what the opportunities are in your area can be really helpful with looking and like trying to figure all that out. So I'm really glad that you said that. So not all created equal.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (1:03:41)
Definitely. producer only
I think is key. I would never sell it in a market that allows reselling. In New York City, we actually get inspected and we have to provide very detailed crop plans and they're ruthless. You could only sell what you grow. And I also, in my experience, working for markets that are non-profits seems to be important as opposed to run by a for-profit or some other kind of business.
like run by a board and nonprofit and producer only. Those all have been really positive experiences for us.
Jenny (1:04:18)
Yeah.
Well, thank you so much, Rebecca, for being here and talking about farmers markets with me because I love farmers markets. They've been great for my business. know a lot. They get a lot of flack sometimes, but I think that's just because people are going to the wrong markets or they're like, you know, just kind of either going about it the wrong way or trying to make something work where it's like just really not going to. And it's just been really fun to hear about the way that you look at your farmers markets and how you approach them.
thank you for sharing so much valuable advice and information about how you guys do things. So could you just tell everyone where they can find out more about you and Moonshot Farm?
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (1:05:00)
yeah, thanks Jenny, this has been so fun. I love talking about farmers markets. I love farmers markets. And we are, guess, most active on Instagram. Our handle is moonshot underscore farm and our website's just moonshotfarm.com and I don't offer any farmer to farmer stuff right now, but I try to share a lot of tips and behind the scenes on our Instagram. So yeah, say hi.
Jenny (1:05:23)
Yeah, and Rebecca also writes a lot of really amazing articles for Growing for Market magazine. And I've read some really awesome ones from you in there recently. So you can check out some of her farmer to farmer stuff there. So she's being humble, but awesome.
Rebecca Kutzer-Rice (1:05:39)
Blank steady, that's a good point. I guess my brain blinked. But yes, please check out Growing for Market magazine.
Jenny (1:05:44)
Yeah, she also writes a lot of good stuff for them. So thank you so much, Rebecca. Everyone go check out her Instagram. It's moonshotfarm. And then we will see everyone next time on the next episode of the Six Figure Flower Farming Podcast. Bye bye.
Jenny (1:06:00)
Hey, one last thing before you go, I have a super quick favor to ask.
If you haven't yet, could you please leave the six figure flower farming podcast a review on Apple or Spotify? If you've gotten any value or insight out of this podcast at all, it would seriously mean the world to me and to your fellow flower farmers because those reviews help them find the valuable information they need to build their profitable and sustainable flower farm businesses. So please just take less than 30 seconds. It literally takes no time at all to just
go ahead and leave a review now and I will be forever grateful. Thank you so much in advance and I'll see you next time.
