One month: so far, so good

Yesterday marks the end of our first month of operation. It’s been a busy and difficult month for us, but also exciting, educational, and even — most of the time — fun.

There have been a number of surprises, and I’ll share a few of them here. One real surprise is how shopping habits change without any detectable rhyme or reason. There have been afternoons where we have sold more than 25 bags of grapes in a few hours, and other multi-day periods where we have sold one or two. People will snap up an entire box of blood oranges within an hour of us putting them on the shelf, and then the final four oranges (in good shape, not damaged or overripe) will sit there for three days untouched.

I’ve also been impressed with the price-sensitivity of customers on a few key items: raising our orange juice price from $4.75 to $5 made our sales drop considerably (we’ve now lowered it to $4.50 to be in line with other stores in the neighborhood — we buy it for about $3.80 wholesale), and our El Milagro tortillas sell very well at 3 for a dollar and didn’t sell at all for 2 for a dollar.

The most surprising things sell, too: Kim Chee and 5lb bags of black rice fly off of our shelves at alarming rates, while I think only one person has bought mustard, and we’ve only sold one package of butter. Who would have guessed?

We’ve made our fair share of mistakes in the last month, too: buying a box of chard that wilted before we could sell a single bunch, organic milk that cost $9 per gallon (our Organic Valley milk is now $7, and we’re looking for ways to lower it more), accidentally selling Ibarra mexican chocolate for lower than the wholesale priced (sorry, we’ve had to raise the price from $2 to $3), and countless other things.

Thank you, dear customers, for sticking with us while we figure out how to effectively run our store. I’m looking forward to the next month.

On the shelf: coral broccoli (a/k/a Romanesco broccoli a/k/a “fractal food”), more blood oranges, rambutan, vegan sausage, Hawaiian Papaya, organic Broccolini, Bonne Maman preserves, concord grapes, asian pears, red and green bell peppers, eggplant.