Small producers and buyers enjoy auctions beside the big guys

By Patty Rice Groth

Seen here is just a por­tion of the small lots of pro­duce avail­able at a recent Mon­day whole­sale auc­tion at Owl Creek Pro­duce Auc­tion in Fred­er­ick­town. Small lots like these are per­fect for the home canner/freezer.

With can­ning sea­son upon us, grow­ers and con­sumers alike should be tak­ing a look at the oppor­tu­ni­ties and pro­duce avail­abil­ity of whole­sale pro­duce auc­tions all over Ohio. Don’t let the word “whole­sale” throw you off — many mar­kets include small lots which are per­fect for the per­son can­ning for the family.

For exam­ple, Owl Creek Pro­duce Auc­tion on Mor­row County Road 22, Water­ford Road, near Fred­er­ick­town accepts pro­duce con­sign­ments from large pro­duc­ers with quan­tity counts in the hun­dreds, even thou­sands, as well as the small pro­ducer bring­ing half-peck and peck sized lots.

Some of the bid­ders attend­ing the three weekly auc­tions at Owl Creek are buy­ing for small and large gro­cery stores and restau­rants; these are true whole­sale buy­ers. Oth­ers are folks, good ol’-fashioned con­sumers, hop­ing to get enough green beans or toma­toes to can for home use.

At Owl Creek, sep­a­rate areas are set up to accom­mo­date both kinds of buy­ers and sell­ers, with an auc­tion­eer work­ing each area. The pro­duce avail­able for con­sumers includes all kinds of pep­pers in many shapes and sizes, pecks of green beans, toma­toes and black­ber­ries. Cucum­bers, pick­ling and table vari­eties, zuc­chini, mel­ons, apples and yel­low squash were also avail­able in small lots.

Per­haps the term “small lots” should be defined here. Under­stand­ing what is being sold at the moment is the most impor­tant thing a pro­duce auc­tion buyer needs to know, espe­cially those buy­ing in small quantities.

The auc­tion­eer is hold­ing up a small round seed­less water­melon, for exam­ple. It is one of six in a box pro­vided by the seller. The seller has filled out a tag which tells the auc­tion­eer who he or she is and how the seller intends the lot (the box, in this case) to be sold. In this true exam­ple, the tag said “seed­less water­mel­ons x6.”

It is the “x6” nota­tion that buy­ers either did not hear or did not under­stand. That box of small seed­less water­mel­ons sold for $36 plus!

Owl Creek man­ager Kelly Brown has been known to ask groups of buy­ers around the auc­tion­eer to not engage in chit-chat hop­ing to pre­vent such an inci­dent. New vis­i­tors to a pro­duce auc­tion may won­der why peo­ple move around so much. Most likely, they are try­ing to posi­tion them­selves to hear exactly what the auc­tion­eer is announc­ing. Imag­ine the water­melon buyer’s reac­tion at check­out when told the total due is, say, $50, not the $20 the buyer had calculated.

If there are mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances, the buyer may be allowed off the hook. How­ever, the buyer’s lack of atten­tion or infor­ma­tion has now cost the seller too. If the group of buy­ers bid­ding the cost up to $6 each had under­stood what was for sale, the sell­ing price likely would have been nearer $2 each, $12 for the box.

That cost would be bet­ter than one sees in a gro­cery story and the buyer’s fam­ily would have enjoyed fresh water­melon that evening. Instead, the buyer may have left the auc­tion with­out any water­mel­ons, and/or very upset, and the seller was left with six unsold watermelons.

Each whole­sale pro­duce auc­tion loca­tion has its own poli­cies about such cir­cum­stances, how­ever, and it may be “buyer beware.”

It is not known what the final out­come was in this water­melon exam­ple. The good news would be that if the seller were left hold­ing the mel­ons, another auc­tion was sched­uled on Wednes­day and the mel­ons would still be fresh. Although, they would not be as fresh as they were on Monday.

A big beau­ti­ful water­melon — the type that sell for $8–10 or more at the grocer’s — went for $3.50.

Large quan­tity lots of water­mel­ons sold on Fri­day, Aug. 10, two days before the auc­tion being dis­cussed, sold for $.50 to $2.25 each.

At the Mon­day, Aug. 13, auc­tion, a peck of beef­steak toma­toes went for $3.50, a great price. Beef­steak toma­toes are great slic­ing toma­toes for burg­ers and sal­ads. A peck of an unnamed vari­ety of heir­loom toma­toes when for $8 and another peck of the same for $7, both great prices. Pecks of “can­ning toma­toes” went for very rea­son­able prices. Often, buy­ers could choose how many pecks from the lot to buy if the seller marked the tag accord­ingly. In most cases, can­ning tomato buy­ers were happy to take all of the small lot pur­chased. When a buyer does not take all of a lot, other bid­ders may buy the remain­der of the lot at the same price.

Black­ber­ries are just com­ing in, and buy­ers were able to get pints at $4 and $3.75 each. In the case of the blue­ber­ries, the buyer took all of the lot, that is, all of the pints avail­able for sale.

That buyer, Chuck Carey, of AVI Food Sys­tems, is the food ser­vice direc­tor for Knox County Hos­pi­tal in Mount Ver­non, not far from Owl Creek’s loca­tion in Mor­row County. Owl Creek sits very close to the county’s bound­aries with Rich­land and Knox coun­ties. He indi­cated most of what he pur­chased was for use at the hos­pi­tal. He did buy some toma­toes he planned to can for use at his home, too.

New whole­sale pro­duce auc­tion buy­ers would do well to take a page from his book. Carey care­fully reviewed every­thing avail­able at that day’s auc­tion, both in large and con­sumer lots. He exam­ined the items and read the tags. An expe­ri­enced buyer, Carey was able to move between the two sides of the auc­tion putting him­self in the right place at the right time to make his purchases.

A num­ber of buy­ers com­mented they were buy­ing for home can­ning; in fact, all but one of the peo­ple this writer spoke with that day were pro­vid­ing for their fam­i­lies. Com­mer­cial buy­ers are not always will­ing to reveal whom they rep­re­sent, includ­ing the one whole­sale buyer approached.

Most of the sell­ers at Owl Creek come from the large Amish com­mu­nity sur­round­ing the site. For the con­sumer, it means one is buy­ing the exact same pro­duce being sold at the gro­cery store or being pre­pared in a restaurant.

Some­times sell­ers bring very small lots to the auc­tion. For exam­ple, at this Mon­day auc­tion, only seven dozen eggs were avail­able, for sale as one lot. They brought $1.70 per dozen. Since the seller was also there to buy for per­sonal use and can­ning, the cost was OK. Eggs often go very inex­pen­sively at mid-week and pre-weekend sales. The more eggs avail­able, the lower the sell­ing prices— same is true what­ever is for sale.

Look­ing at some of the whole­sale large lot prices may help con­sumers under­stand gro­cery store prices. At the Aug. 10 auc­tion, seven pecks of apples sold between $3 and $6.50 each. Bags of five dozen ears of sweet corn sold between $9 and $16 per bag. There were 32 such bags avail­able that day. There were 52 bags/boxes each con­tain­ing one dozen ears went for $2.50 to $4.50 per dozen.

As crops are avail­able, prices will vary. Home can­ners should be buy­ing toma­toes now. Early black­ber­ries went from $1 to $2.50 per pint on Aug. 8 to the Aug. 13 price as men­tioned above. There were 42 pints of black­ber­ries for sale on the eighth; less than 15 just five days later.

Mon­day quan­ti­ties might be lower than what is avail­able on sale days later in the week. All sell­ers are wel­come at these auc­tions, though the major­ity are from the sur­round­ing Amish com­mu­nity. Amish farm­ers are not in the fields on Sun­days. What is avail­able for sale from them is what was picked that morn­ing. So, fresh­ness increases the value of the lots.

At Owl Creek at this time of year, auc­tions are held on Mon­days start­ing at 11 a.m., Wednes­days start­ing at 10 a.m., and Fri­days start­ing at 9 a.m. Later in the year the sched­ule will change.

Whole­sale pro­duce auc­tions exist all over Ohio and can be eas­ily found using the Inter­net and one’s per­sonal net­work. Search­ing “food auc­tions Ohio” brought up more than 24 mil­lion results. Find­ing a pro­duce auc­tion nearby should not be hard.

Patty Rice Groth is a coore­spon­dent for The Galion Inquirer.

Posted by Acres Admin on Sep 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.