Pricing

[Popparand]

I visited the market in Safron Walden today and there was a stall selling local "Safron Walden" honey @ £4 / 1 lb jar. It's not like the folks in Safron Walden look like they are short of cash either. People were buying 4 or 5 jars at a time in the few minutes I was there.

Yes. It's ridiculous. Do these folk think they are running a charity? I sell in our S Suffolk market £5.00 for 12 oz and £6.00 for 1lb. I guess I'll keep ticking over until these morons run out of stock. Hey ho - bring on February!

 

[Beefriendly]

From experience I find most are afraid to ask a decent price, or they tell me it's "priced to sell". I think it's inexperience on the sellers parts that they are not prepared (or confident enough) to ask reasonable price for a quality product.
On most food fares with cheaper competition I usually seem to do far better than the cheap honey sellers. Some of my customers have told me they are very suspicious of cheap honey and want to be sure they are buying the real McCoy.

 

[wightbees]

I would of thought in Suffolk you could get £9 or more a lb. ?

 

[Hivemaker.]

Yes. It's ridiculous. Do these folk think they are running a charity?

I think most are doing it as more of a hobby and not really interested in the money, lots of other hobbies cost money with no kind of financial return.

 

[fatshark]

I agree HM, but there are costs in scaling up to produce a reasonable harvest that are good to recoup ... if it was a hobby alone I might have stopped with 2 colonies and done "crush and strain" ...

It's interesting how supermarket pricing influences the expectation of customers. About a third of those who email me asking for honey (some even going so far as to arrange a time to collect) never appear, presumably because I charge a bit more than £4 a pound.

I sell at the same prices 'at the door' and to shops where it flies off the shelves with 40 to 50% markup ...

 

[Hachi]

Mine flies off the shelf at £6/lb or pro rata.

Anyone who sells so cheaply should consider selling it in bulk. Why go to the time and energy of jarring it to sell it for next to nowt especially when bulk prices this year ranged from £3.20 to £3.50 / lb?

Not even worth jarring is it when sold so cheaply?

 

[Hedgerow Honey]

At the moment bulk price's in excess of £8.90 @ kilo can be achieved quite easily. If it were not for loyalty to my customers what I have left would be gone to a packer.

 

[fatshark]

Interesting (and encouraging) that bulk prices that good are possible in what was a pretty good year for honey.

Over £6 for 227g and £8.50 (ish) in some shops here for 340g jars. Almost no point in jarring 454g as it pushes the price over a tenner which appears to be a psychological barrier to the buyer.

From the door 340g jars are most popular, though I still get requests for 454g.

 

[Hivemaker.]

Interesting (and encouraging) that bulk prices that good are possible in what was a pretty good year for honey.

Rowse are paying £3.30 lb for bulk English honey, other large scale packers much the same.

 

[beeno]

None in Waitrose either.

 

[Hivemaker.]

None in Waitrose either.

Get it via Amazon then, £7.93 for 250g...or direct from British essentials, £4.09 340g.