How to sell overpriced flour in Copenhagen👍😀

The experience economy in farming can give customers more than a bag of flour. I share an idea from 2018 about small family plots, pictures of the grain growing and visits to the farmer. The concept hadn’t been tested.

The video is from July 2018 and was recorded in Sønderborg during my speaking tour. Here I share an idea for how a farmer could combine his produce with an experience.

The farmer wanted to be closer to customers in Copenhagen

After my talk in Sønderborg, I spoke to a farmer. He had a small farm in the area and asked how he could make more money. Getting started as a farmer is expensive.

He regretted not being closer to Copenhagen. Then perhaps he could sell his produce at a higher price from a farm shop.

I suggested he could instead think about his land and crops in a completely different way.

What if a family could have its own little field?

The idea was to divide some of the land into small plots, perhaps ten by ten metres, which families could adopt or be assigned.

A family from Østerbro could travel to Southern Jutland and sow their own spelt. The farmer could put up a sign saying "The Hansen family" and look after the field day to day.

Once a month, he could send a picture showing how the grain was growing. The family could follow its progress and bring the children down to visit their little field.

When the grain was harvested, they could collect their own flour or help mill it. Then they could go home and bake bread with something they’d helped produce.

The flour comes with a story and an experience

That’s different from just buying a bag of flour. The family gets a connection to the place, the farmer and what they eat.

I also imagined the family sharing pictures of the field’s progress on Facebook and Instagram. Other families might see it and want to join in.

If the crop was grown organically, that could be part of the concept. You could also consider donating some of the payment to charity. Those were ideas I was playing with in the conversation, not a finished concept with every detail worked out.

The point was that the customer could get several things from the purchase: produce, experiences with the children and a sense of supporting a small farmer.

The experience economy in farming: From produce to experience

Instead of only selling grain at the market price, the farmer might get more for it by selling the whole experience.

As a hypothetical example, I suggested that customers might pay around fifty per cent more than for ordinary flour. That was an idea, not a result we’d tested.

There could also be goats or sheep for the children to stroke when the family visited. Then the trip to the field would be an experience in itself.

That’s the possibility I find fun: The farmer doesn’t have to move closer to Copenhagen. He can give customers in Copenhagen a reason to take an interest in him and come to Southern Jutland.

I don’t know whether the idea will be put into practice. But I hope it can inspire others to think about what they can sell alongside their product so the customer gets more value than the produce alone.

You can find more of my experience of creating value for customers in Iværksætter til jeg dør.