Thursday, October 11, 2007

Mark Your Calendars

Get your calendars out and pens ready to mark: Market to Market: 2008 Missouri Farmers Market Workshops on your schedule.

The Missouri Dept. of Agriculture will be presenting six farmers’ market workshops this coming winter across the state. The workshops will be designed to help established markets with marketing and promotional needs and for new start-up markets.

We will keep you informed when more details become available.

Market to Market: 2008 Missouri Farmers Market Workshops

Workshop Dates:
Tuesday, Feb 26: St. Louis
Wednesday, Feb 27: Cape G
Thursday, Feb 28: Springfield
Monday, March 3: Columbia
Tuesday, March 4: Kirksville
Wednesday, March 5: Kansas City

Topics Include:
Establishing a Successful Farmers’ Market

5 steps in Establishing a Successful Farmers’ Market

Get Your Scale Certified for 2008
Weights & Measures will be at each meeting to certify vendor’s scales

Market Selling Do’s and Don’ts (Q & A)
Health Dept. Guidelines, requirements for shell eggs sold in Missouri, egg licensing, selling methods of retail sale for fresh fruits and vegetables and sales tax for farmers’ market vendors

Get Your Market Heard (Marketing & Promotions)
Gain valuable tips on how to advertise to increase sales at your farmers' market. Explored different types of promotion venues such as flyer design, business cards, signage, and creation of press kits for newspapers and radio stations. Cover marketing through channels as simple as word-of-mouth or complex as the Internet (branding and blogging).

What can AgriMissouri and the Missouri Farmers’ Market Association Do for Your Market?
Why to join these organizations, marketing avenues for your market

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where Do I find time and location for Springfield MO? I have gone to the MDA website and it is too confusing to find anything. Its not intuitive.

Lane said...

You can find times and locations of any Missouri market on the Farmers' Market Directory located at http://agebb.missouri.edu/fmktdir/index.htm

Anonymous said...

There's no time listed for the Cape Girardeau Farmers Market Workshop either.

Lane said...

Times and exact locations will be available in December when everything is finalized. I will be sending brochures to all markets at that time.