Ask a struggling vendor how they set prices and you'll usually hear some version of "I looked at what felt fair." Feeling isn't a strategy. Price is the lever with the biggest impact on your take-home pay, and it deserves to be set on purpose.
Start With Your True Costs
Before you look at anyone else, know your floor. Your price has to cover more than the cost of the goods:
- Cost of goods — what you paid to grow, buy, or produce the item.
- Stall fee — spread across everything you expect to sell that day.
- Spoilage — the cost of the units that won't sell and can't be reused.
- Your time — prep, travel, setup, and the market hours themselves.
If your price doesn't clear all four, you're paying for the privilege of working a booth.
Read the Competitor Baseline
Shoppers don't price your tomatoes against your costs — they price them against the booth across the aisle. That competitor baseline is the reference point for every decision. Walk the market and record what comparable products actually sell for, then decide where you want to sit relative to it.
Premium vs. Budget Positioning
There are two coherent strategies, and the incoherent middle is where vendors get stuck. You can position premium — higher price, better story, superior quality, careful display — or budget — lower price, higher volume, faster turnover. Pick one on purpose. What doesn't work is a premium price with a budget presentation, or a budget price on a product you can't afford to sell cheaply.
The Sell-Out Signal
If you sell out every single week within the first hour, that's not a triumph — it's a pricing signal. Demand is telling you it would happily pay more. Nudge prices up until you're selling through most (not all) of your stock by close. That's the sweet spot where profit lives.
A Simple Pricing Workflow
- Calculate your cost floor (goods + stall + spoilage + time).
- Record the competitor baseline for each product.
- Choose a position: premium or budget, deliberately.
- Set your opening price above the floor and near your chosen position.
- Watch the sell-through and adjust next market day.