Last Labor Day weekend was a lot of work for me. All irony aside, I spent all evening that Friday, a long day Saturday, and Sunday from early morning until about 2 in the afternoon at the Ace Hardware parking lot, trying to sell as many cases of peaches as we could move. It was the first time our Rotary club had tried selling peaches from the western slope as a major fundraiser, and we bought the minimum order a group could get and still have them delivered directly to our site on the truck's route. That meant we had four pallets, a total of 320 cases of fruit, each holding between 30 and 35 peaches. In three hard days, we netted about $1500 after expenses, and we learned a lot. We couldn't possibly sell that many in the time we had, with the marketing effort we had put in. We donated at least one full pallet to the Our Center, a local Rotary supported charity that feeds homeless and low income folks in town (and I heard they consumed, what, 2000 pounds of peaches, give or take, in 3 days that week).
This year we overcorrected our methods. We advertised the hell out of this fundraiser, putting it on the Facebook page, in the downtown events email blast, signs near the bank that was the work site, and talked it up word of mouth like crazy. This year's president lowered our order from 4 pallets to 1, and agreed to drive all the way down to Golden to bring them back in his truck. I arrived this morning at 10 to help sell, and they had run out of unclaimed boxes an hour before I got there. My job for the next 3 hours was just to help load cars and take money from people who preordered, and to gently let down the strangers who drove up to ask to buy. I am so glad I preordered my own 2 cases. I would have been S.O.L. otherwise.
So again, in this, the second year, we have learned many important lessons. We still will end up netting about a grand, but we won't have given any to the less fortunate for free. We know that our marketing works, and we have to hope we didn't upset future customers by running out of product. The magic number for where we are, in this town, going into the third year next year will be either 2 or 3 pallets. 160 or 240 cases. I believe as we apply our institutional knowledge, we can sell the higher amount, but we will need the levels of commitment we had in year 1 to do it. I know I'll help some, but man, I don't know whether I can spend 3 whole days in the sun. Somewhere is a happy medium.
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