Neighborhood-run produce market?

I'm starting a produce market out of my garage, and would love some input.

Our neighborhood produces so much...produce, that I want to create a place for everyone to buy and sell their excess.

Our model in a nutshell: I have a cute garden shed that's pretty spacious. We plug in a refrigerator and put up some shelves. There's a whiteboard on the wall. We open in the morning and anyone in the neighborhood can come by and drop off their produce. They write what they have on a whiteboard, the price, and their Venmo account. We use GroupMe to alert everyone in the neighborhood about the new inventory, then it's just an honor system - come and take what you want, look up the Venmo account of the owner, and pay them with your phone. Also, after a few days I take whatever doesn't sell, as payment for providing the market.

I wrote more here, but we're still fleshing out the finer details. Any considerations I'm missing?

We want to keep this simple enough that people will steal the idea and set them up in their own neighborhoods.

http://www.hackyourhometown.com/the-grassroots-produce-stand-that-runs-itself/

Seems really centralized to me... And payment via a method that I haven't heard of before? Other than that, sounds great.

Never heard off the payment method, but check out: www.veggievinder.com. It's really easy and lets you do just that, without the shed. Very nice guy made it to try and make the world a better place.

I do like the communal shed idea.  What happens when someone arrives and says I got broccoli for $2 and you got celery for $2, let's swap.  Is there a way they can communicate that without arriving in the shed at the same time?

Why not cash? Really people need cash to pay bills, nothing fancy. And the first thing what I thought: the insurance. I know it's awful but.... Can you get under someone else's insurance? We did the edible gardens festival and went under slow food.

I feel you have a great idea here.

Though Angelika brings up a good point regarding insurance.  Having this in a shed or your garage brings up several thing to keep in mind, besides the liability issue of having a lot of people coming and going on your property on a daily basis.

Will the city require you to have a license or permit?  It is one thing to have a garage sale occasionally but selling on a daily basis is something the city might want part of.

I don't want to rain on your parade.  I am just trying to bring up some valid points.

What you might want to consider is doing your idea from a booth at the local farmers market.

It is an idea that is so important and I cannot imagine anything less centralized, but I fear the author may not return in regard to the insurance issues Also with the farmers market is it peoples impression that said markets allow for an aggregation of growers at a single booth?

I think Dave has a great idea. His business model could be that the members pay a small fee to join, such as $10 or $15 to handle admin fees or maybe the cost of the insurance.  As a business entity there would be no reason a Farmers Market would turn them down because of "an aggregation of growers at a single booth".

Around here Vegetables, eggs, cheese, firewood, cut flowers and etc. are sold streetside.  Most of the selling is done through an honor system  with a cash box.  (landowners with 5+ acres get a tax break for selling anything)

There are some large stands around, usually affiliated with large farms. These are run just like a retail store.  


Good luck.

My farmer's market is "producer only". We require that the person manning the booth is the farmer that grew the vegetables. We do farm inspections to make sure that the farm really is growing what they say they are. We are very serious about not letting non-vetted and non-local vegetables, into our market.