Developing Farm Picking
From Triple Performance
Farm pick-your-own (or self-service picking) allows consumers to harvest vegetables, fruits, and flowers themselves on the farm.
The clientele is rather growing, made up of families, retirees, mostly urban, and loyal.
Farm pick-your-own allows to[1]:
- Start selling with a low level of investment
- Limit harvesting and selling costs
- Limit the hardship of the work (compared to a market for example)
Success conditions
- Be close to a population center
- Provide good advertising signage, easy access, availability of shelter and parking, toilets
- Set up significant communication: events and educational panels on site
- Plan marked and sufficiently wide aisles in the cultivated area
- Open during broad and respected time slots
- Organize your harvest in a structured way
- Offer a wide range of products (vegetables, fruits, flowers)
- Lend picking tools: wheelbarrow, bucket, spade
Questions to ask yourself
- Do you have enough customers within 10 to 20 minutes?
- Is the clientele urban? rural? Do they have gardens or vegetable patches?
- What additional services can you offer to retain customers (events, celebrations…)?
- How do you organize your production to spread out the selling period?
- Do you have arrangements to make to enable picking?
- Are you ready to work in the presence of customers?
- Do you consider other sales methods compatible with pick-your-own?
Advantages of farm pick-your-own
- Low investment related to sales
- Time saving (selling and harvesting)
- Good product image (freshness, traceability established by default…)
- Possibility to sell a large volume through attractive prices
Disadvantages of farm pick-your-own
- High loss rate (+/- 30%)
- Mandatory opening on weekends, holidays, and public holidays
- Dependence on weather conditions
- Need for labor to supervise and advise customers
Learn more
Find below the picking dossier from the CERD:
Cette technique s'applique aux cultures suivantes
La technique est complémentaire des techniques suivantes
- Selling your products on the farm
- Installing a vending machine
- Selling in short supply chains: regulations and labeling
