Sunday, Sunday
The most interesting piece of data to come from George’s stats comparing this year with last year was the shift in best sales days per weekend. In May 2018 we had two of four weekends where Sunday sales topped Saturday sales. As for the month just ending, Sunday outsold Saturday on each of the four weekends we vended in the Yellow Room of the Oliver Indoor Flea Market.
Looking deeper, there were a total of five vending dates in May 2018 where sales were in the single digits. Compared to this year, only one vending date was less than 10 jars. There is a disclaimer here…the first Saturday of May 2018 saw us vending at an event in the Princeton Legion. The numbers that day were good but our Oliver booth was also open on that date.
This Year Our Numbers Are Growing
One final bit on stats. Our best sales day in Oliver in May of 2018 was the 19th where we sold a total of 19 jars. As for May 2019, the best sales day was also on the 19th. The total jar count that day was 27. As for monthly totals, this year we sold 54 more jars than in May 2018. Even including the 30 jars sold in Princeton last year this May is still 24 jars ahead of 2018.
New Product Introduced This Month
Rhubarb has for some reason become a big deal at JamBusters! The eBook George wrote about how we started our business and how you can do the same is titled, “Someone Stole Our Rhubarb” which happens to be what helped to launch our business. Well, two winters ago we were gifted with seven rhubarb plants that we put in the raised bed in our yard.
This year those plants have started to produce a massive amount of rhubarb. In fact, it was on May 15 of this year when I made the first harvest. I had found an interesting recipe I wanted to try and in recent weeks we have had customers asking for chutney. It seemed like a natural to me to work on a chutney recipe that included rhubarb along with other new rhubarb recipes.
The first batch of the product, which George named ‘Barr Street Rhubarb Chutney’ was a hit. So far we have sold it only on two weekends and completely sold out of one batch and put a serious dent into another batch. Barr Street, by the way, is the street that our rhubarb patch sits on and we thought using that in the name gave the product a sort of high brow feeling to it.
Increasing Our Marketing Footprint
George will be once again creating the visual tools for use in print advertising JamBusters! and Watkins will be using in a South Okanagan area weekly newspaper. He will also be designing the print advertising for a handful of other vendors in the Oliver Indoor Flea Market who will be part of this marketing program. I know he loves being able to keep his skills up on that.
Otherwise, we will be vending in the Yellow Room of the Oliver Indoor Flea Market for all of the year. We have a small number of outdoor events we are looking at for the Summer and have confirmed participation for one in August and another in September so far. Whether or not we’ll be adding much to that part of our calendar is unknown at this time, but you never know.