Become aMyPick®

Verified LocalFarmer® andshow shoppersthat you’re the real deal.

As a MyPick® member, you’ll also get a professional marketing toolkit to help you maximize your sales.

“Since we started displaying our signs, our sales are up considerably. I think last year, we were up 25%.”

- Sam McLean, McLean Berry Farm

“It works. It’s what the public wants.” - Tim Belch, Peterborough Buffalo Farms

“It’s a great program. It lends integrity to the industry knowing that the people who are selling the product are also the people who are growing the product.”

- Bozidar Toic, Bosco Farms

Find out more on the next page and at MyPick.ca.

A sampling of the support you can expect as a MyPick® Verified Local Farmer®

from MyPick® and Farmers’ Markets Ontario® Promotional materials• Laminated poster for your market stand• 2-sided information cards to hand out • Branded canopies at discounted rates• Detailed profile of your farm (with photograph) on the MyPick.ca website

Informational materials• MarketMatters newsletters (including access to all back issues) • 1-page vendor tip sheets & 8-to-10-page vendor “supertools” on creating dazzling displays, providing exceptional customer service and keeping customers coming back • Food safety manual and checklists• Videos on customer service & food safety • Info on regulations governing consumer packaging, labelling and signage• Easy access to OMAFRA and ON Organic news and publications• Valuable info on signage legibility, colour psychology & legible colour combinations

Other assistance• Help locating nearby farmers’ markets in need of your products • Food handling safety certification subsidy

Learn about MyPick® eligibility requirements at MyPick.ca or by calling us at 1-800-387-3276.

How to make your display look great–and work hard for you4 Keep your display clean and organized. You’re competing with supermarkets so make sure your display looks just as neat and clean. Keep baked goods covered to keep flies and bees off. Use a long tablecloth to conceal messy-loooking bins and boxes under your stall.

4 Mix up your colours. Although masses of the same colour do create a sense of harmony, it pays to break up vast expanses of the same colour with contrasting ones so that each colour “pops”—i.e., seems more colourful and appealing. So place carrots beside cucumbers, blueberries beside strawberries, peppers beside cauliflower, etc.

4 Add tonal contrast. If you’re selling fairly colourless produce like garlic and yellow onions, they’ll look boring and anemic if you place them on a white or beige background. Instead, place them on a darker background to make them stand out. Consider using a prop or two to add a touch of colour.

4 Choose textures and fabrics carefully. Displaying products in or on china, pottery or glass adds a sense of fine-dining sophistication, whereas baskets and burlap bags make your products look fresh from the farm. Decide what message you want to convey, then choose a texture that says it.

4 Keep the number of background colours down to just 1-3. If you have too many background colours (including containers and tablecloths), it can make your stall look messy and be distracting. Keep the shopper’s eye drawn to your food. (Avoid tablecloths with bright or busy patterns.)

4 Use groupings of 3 or 5. It’s a design thing. Odd-numbered groupings are more visually pleasing than even-numbered groupings. Sounds strange but true.

4 Pile it high. Don’t think of your stall in just two dimensions. Use boxes, shelves and bins to put products at different levels. Hang things from your canopy. Tilt baskets forward. This will give your display more visual impact, convey a better sense of abundance, and get your products closer to eye level.

4 Use labels and signs to help you sell. Even people who aren’t shy don’t like asking about prices, and sometimes, rather than ask, they just walk away. So make sure your prices are clear and obvious, and don’t stop at naming and pricing things. Use signs to tell people about your products—how they were produced, what they’re good for, how to prepare them and what to serve them with. Signs are “silent salesmen” who can do your selling for you when you’re busy doing other things.

4 Have fun with your signs. Humour sells. It always has and it always will. Humour instantly makes you likable, gives you personality, and makes anything you have to say a lot more memorable.. So go ahead. Use puns. Be irreverent. One of our favourite signs: “Our eggs are so fresh, the hens don’t realize they’re gone.”

4 Be creative with your display. Be amusing. Be beautiful. Be quirky. Be fun. Give out free samples. Surprise and delight shoppers. It’ll set you apart and may get people telling their friends about you.

4 Hammer home your farm or brand name. Put your farm name or company logo everywhere you can: on your signs, T-shirt, apron, recipe sheets, brochures, price tags, product labels, umbrella or canopy. Make sure people remember where they got what they bought.

For more in-depth ideas and advice, look for FMO’s illustrated tip sheet called GREAT DISPLAYS available at www.farmersmarketsontario.com.

Contrasting colours really “pop”

Baskets on two levels, products hung on walls. Good use of vertical space. Un-missable price signs.

Good use of tiered display, colour &rustic texture.Clear product name-and-price signs.

Farmers’ Market Vendor Tips Checklist 1: Displays

A FARMERS’ MARKETS ONTARIO® TOOLBOX CHECKLIST FOR VENDORS

Artist’s conception

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11” x 17” laminated poster

Personalized canopy available at MyPick® member price

Profile on MyPick.ca

can’t kill them. Floods, droughts, bad weather: you name it, they can survive it. We put our first crop in during the fall of 2011. In February 2012 we had an early spring with temperatures around 12 °C. The plants woke up, the buds broke, the leaves opened and the flowers were already beginning when the ice storm hit. We thought that was it – there go our life savings; but no, we didn’t lose a single haskap plant, even though all our Saskatoon berry plants died. In fact, we’ve lost only seven haskap plants so far – and they were trampled by a moose!

We use 20% of our haskap crop to make jams and jellies, and the remaining 80% to make wine. We produce a dry, full-bodied haskap table wine that tastes a bit like a Pinot Noir with earthy undertones. It pairs well with poultry, especially turkey. We have plans to make wines with individual berries, including a dessert wine and a fortified wine. We also make a wild cherry wine, a Saskatoon berry wine and a maple-apple dessert wine. This year, we made a pumpkin wine and fermented it right in the pumpkin! The fruit wine industry elsewhere in the world is huge. Canada has been slow to pick up on it, but I think the area between North Bay and Sudbury could become an official fruit wine region and attract a lot of tourist dollars.

MyPick® Verified Local Farmers® Profile: Mira & Greg Melien, Boreal Berry Farm & Winery

Contact Farmers’ Markets Ontario®Farmers’ Markets Ontario®54 Bayshore Rd., RR# 4, Brighton, ON K0K 1H0 Toll-free:1-800-387 FARM (3276)Phone: 613-475-GROW (4769)Fax: 613-475-2913Email: fmo@farmersmarketsontario.com

Learn about the MyPick®

program at MyPick.ca

® Over to you. Please tell us: 1. What are your main challenges as a vendor or manager?2. What would you like to ask another manager or vendor?

FOR MARKETMANAGERS ONLY:Join our Market Managers’ Facebook Forum!You asked and we’re delivering! Farmers’ Markets Ontario® has created a new Facebook page exclusively for market managers across the province. It’s your new home for sharing views & news as well as tips & ideas. Help each other with issues and share your successes!

Find the group by searching “Market Managers’ Facebook Forum” through your Facebook account. You will need to request permission to join (remember, this group is exclusively for market managers! Nobody else allowed!) Once you are approved, review the rules of the forum and then you’re free to start posting!

The rules:

• Be helpful, friendly and positive

• Stay on topic

• Don’t use offensive language

• Don’t use the site to sell anything

• Be respectful – meaning: - No personal attacks - No derogatory remarks / insults - No flaming / baiting

• You must be a market manager or leader

• You must be 18 years of age or older

These rules are designed to keep discussions light and lively, productive and polite so our forum is a safe and welcoming place for all.

Comments that break the rules will be removed.

Join the conversation at https://www.facebook.com/groups/1445856898991933. If you have any questions or concerns, phone us at 1-800-387-3276 or email catherine.clark@farmersmarketsontario.com.

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Have you Liked us yet? Have you tweeted us lately?

Visit us at the following links for all the latest updates:FMO on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/Farmers-Markets-Ontario/111525108903511Twitter@FarmersMktsOnt http://twitter.com/FarmersMktsOntTwitter@MyMarketToronto http://twitter.com/MyMarketToronto

We’ve always grown cherries, Saskatoon berries, aronia (chokeberries), lingonberries and lavendar, but now 40 acres of our land are dedicated to five varieties of haskap berries: 10,000 plants in all. That makes us the largest haskap growers in Eastern Canada.

We grow Honey Blue varieties that were bred by the University of Saska-toon to thrive in Ontario’s Boreal Forest growing zones. This year will be our first season with fully mature plants and we expect to harvest almost 10 tonnes of berries, all of them hand-picked because they’re too thin-skinned for mechanical harvesting.Yet they’re incredibly hardy plants. You really

2013 winners of the Premier’s

Award for Agri-Food Innovation Excellence

just that: connect with your customers, connect with your peers, connect with existing and potential market vendors, connect with your communities and with the powers that be in your local municipal government. Inside is a preview of some of the speakers you’ll be meeting in Niagara Falls. Watch the OFVC website for more details on their topics.

MarketMattersIn this issue

Did you know?VQA wine sales at Ontario farmers’ markets have already exceeded $874,000 this year and Bob Chorney, Executive Director of FMO says “Results have been positive for our member markets. We predict a doubling of VQA wine sales next year.” According to figures from the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario and the LCBO, 78 Ontario wineries applied to sell their wares at 125 farmers’ markets. Want wine vendors at your market? Find out more on the AGCO website:agco.on.ca/en/whatwedo/farmers_market.aspx

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MarketMattersTHE NEWSLETTER FOR ONTARIO FARMERS’ MARKETS MANAGERS AND VENDORS

Don’t miss the 2015 Market Managers’ Conference and Symposium Feb 18-19!

Did you know?Haskap berries (a.k.a. Honeyberryiesor Blue Honeysuckle) are oblong berries related to snowberries and elderberries with a taste that’s a cross between blueberries, raspberries and black currants. They have 3-4 times the antioxidants of raspberries and strawberries, and are even more antioxidant-rich than black currants, cranberries or wild blueberries. They make terrific jams & pie fillings, salad dressings, ice cream & smoothies. And they grow in Ontario! (See page 6.)Find out more at: www.haskap.ca

Mark your calendar and register now at www.ofvc.ca to reserve your tickets to the 2015 Ontario Fruit Vegetable Convention on Wednesday & Thursday, February 18 and 19 at the Scotiabank Convention Centre in Niagara Falls. You really don’t want to miss it. The speakers they’ve lined up are excellent.

The OFVC Conference & FMO Sympo-sium will be two stimulating days filled with horticultural experts sharing what they know, food safety gurus giving you important guidance, trade show exhibits featuring everything that’s new, plus rele-vant and thought-provoking educational sessions, round-table discussions and lots of networking opportunities.

The theme of this year’s Conference is Connect for Success, and the entire two days will be dedicated to helping you do

18ISSUE NO. 18 WINTER 2014/2015

Registration has already begun at ofvc.ca!

1 2015 Market Managers’ Conference and Symposium

1 Did you know? (VQA, haskap)

2 VQA wine displays

2 Who’s who at the 2015 OFVC

4 Northern Ontario Travel Grants

4 Farmers’ Market Travelogue

5 FMO: Celebrating 25 years

5 ONroute Market Results 2014

6 Join our Market Managers’ Facebook Forum

6 MyPick® Profile: Mira & Greg Melien, Boreal Berry Farm and Winery

6 Contact Us

Haskap berries

Market Matters 18-R4-Outer Pages-R1.indd 1 15-02-21 11:11 AM

2-sided info cardsabout your farm tohand out to customers

8-10-page vendor “supertools” 1-page reminder checklists

84-page Food Safety Matters manual with info, guidance and useful checklists

MarketMatters6-page newsletters with info for vendors andmarket managers