Availability for April 3

It’s clear that our market keeps growing in every way, and here’s another sign: I just sent out essentially collection letters to customers with past due balances for a total due over $550. It’s the first time we’ve ever done that in seven years (and as far as “normal” business goes, the total is astonishingly small).

I know many of you reading this email have joined us in the past year, so it’s probably high time I spell out the financials of how our market operates on the business end. If this doesn’t interest you, feel free to jump straight to the website, where you’ll find a number of new items listed this week.

First off, we’re legally a “sole Proprietorship”. When the market started in 2002, it was named “Locally Grown Cooperative”, but it was never legally organized as a co-op. Dan & Kris Miller, the founders, were always sure to run things in a cooperative spirit, and when they handed the business to my wife and I in 2004, we’ve tried to do the same thing. I’ve renamed it to “Athens Locally Grown”, but you’ll still hear a number of people refer to us as “the co-op”.

We’re not a non-profit, either, but we’ve structured things so that over time the market can cover its own expenses. When things are good, it covers ours too. Just like all of our member farms are sustainable growers, the market itself needs to be sustainable. I’m still finalizing the tax figures for last year, but it looks like we might have broken even for the first time. Either way, it was close. My wife and I do not get paid, and for now that’s working out for us.

So how does the market cover its expenses? One small way is through the memberships you pay. The $25 a year you give to the market is enough (to put it bluntly) to cover the costs of having you as a customer: banking fees from depositing your checks, paper and ink for printing invoices, Web hosting fees, and that sort of thing. What’s left over goes to helping fund farm tours, food donations to like-minded area groups and events, etc. We currently have about 375 paid members out of the just over 1000 accounts on the website.

By far the bulk of our funding comes from the growers themselves. They generally pay a 10% commission on their sales through the site. The dairies in South Carolina pay a few percent more to help cover our transportation costs, since by federal law we have to go to them to pick up your orders. This money covers the many coolers we use, the tables and cots used to spread out and organize your orders in the back, the truck we recently bought, gasoline, the food allowance we offer our volunteers, etc. During the winter, the sales are not enough to cover our weekly costs, but in the summertime there is extra. Last year, it all evened out in the end.

We pay our growers when they drop off their sales, during the hour before we open the market. Then, you arrive and pay us for our order. We then rush to the bank to deposit the money to cover the checks we just wrote. As explained elsewhere on the website, you are really ordering directly from and paying the growers yourself, but our shared cashbox system makes things convenient for you and them. (Imagine if you ordered from ten growers having to write ten checks when you picked up your items!) This shared cashbox system has so far satisfied the tax man, but it does mean that if you place an order and then never arrive to pick it up, we’re left holding the bag. For that reason, you are responsible for paying for orders not picked up, and that amount is automatically added on to your next order for your convenience.

So, in probably far too much detail, that’s how we operate. Our market is more expensive to run than a traditional “booths and tables” farmers market, the that price buys a system that’s simple, time-saving, flexible, and in my opinion, just better. There’s no money in the bank, but the market is paying for itself. And that means that should my wife and I not be able to continue managing it for whatever reason, someone else can without having to worry about sinking a lot of time and money into keeping it going.

I’ve gone on long enough. Thank you all for your constant support. We’ll see you on Thursday from 4:30 to 8pm at Gosford Wine!