Farmer’s Market Displays

by Nikki Ausschnitt of Northern CA

When we first started producing and selling our canned goods, Steve and I were still attending two farmers’ markets every week. It’s a heavy job lugging large trunks of jars to a market then putting the jars on tables for display. And there’s all the other equipment…tables, awnings, display boxes, tablecloths, etc. It’s a job for a prestidigitator as I wrote about many years ago. But we quickly realized that the hardest job is effectively displaying whatever one is selling. In our case the display is about jars. Customers need to be able to see them and read the labels without bending over or having to move them which means they need to be at a comfortable height and angle. Our first displays were wooden constructions using wine boxes with two display shelves installed at an angle. They were adequate and looked good, but once our jar offerings expanded they were short of display space and wasted too much table space since they couldn’t be stacked.

Then along came my son Cam! He started managing and running our market in SF, spending half his time in the city and half on the farm. While at the farm, on top of many other things, he learned to weld, and has acquired the equipment needed, which became his inspiration to create his own jar displays. Over the years he has become a re-bar welding artist of the jar display! Now when he’s at the farm, at least a part of most days is spent designing and creating displays for the three markets we attend. Since our preserves use 5 different sized jars and some markets use a couple of different sized tables, it’s a complicated job, and he has to do a lot of visualizing—no picture for that. What is being displayed, which products to emphasize, where to position checkout, how tall, how wide, what angle is best, what’s the mix, signage, all are under consideration. Since he only uses re-bar to build the displays, that keeps things simple. They’re the perfect backdrop for the jars, their ribbing keeps them in place, and they’re hardly noticed. He still needs to choose re-bar sizes and decide whether to powder coat them. We all agreed that the rusty rough natural rebar look is the best compliment to the jars full of colorful foods. The real calculating comes after the visualization—measuring, standing jars at different angles, more measuring, how to fit the table, adjusting angles, getting it to stand flat. They are perfect.

Once the display stands are finished the signage needs to be made. Cam’s wife, Rocio, who is a fine ceramist, gets to work measuring the spaces, choosing the lettering and colors, and creating easily read beautiful permanent labels for the displays. The results and the collaboration are wonderful.

One time several years ago, we discovered two not-so-minor-to-us problems when we had to sub for his market on Clement Street. First problem was that we could not get all the displays back in our truck at the end of market! It took two trips to get home, which was only a few blocks away. The other being the weight of each display along with the weight of the boxes full of jars, was almost too much for us. Nevertheless the art, beauty and simplicity of the displays themselves overrode all other considerations.

We just need to have younger folks doing the markets, right?!