Farmers Market

[PizzaHappy]

I want to do a mobile pizza catering business.  What this means is doing public events (fairs, Festivals) and private ( weddings, birthday parties).  I don't have a lot of money to go big right away like a food truck or trailer.  So I was thinking if I only have several thousand dollars to blow on my pizza set up, then I could shoot for farmers markets.  I would buy a 10X10 tent, and pizza oven (Gozney Dome $2,000.00), a freezer unit for sales. 

My plan is to make dough freeze it and bottle sauce to sell at farmers market along with pizzas made from said dough and sauce.

My questions is has anyone out there done farmers markets? Can you make enough money at them to save up and grow to something more? Or are they simply a way to get the word out and get some experience?   Please let me know a realistic approximation of how much money one can expect to make at a farmers market selling pizza?

[Napoli Dapoli]

Farmers' markets imo would be more to advertise your business, spread the word and get higher paying gigs. Because of the limited time frame of most farmers' markets, you might not be able to crank out enough pizze to make enough profit to make it worthwhile. You might be looking at a greater profit from selling prepared food (dough, sauce, sausage, etc.).

What's your competition at the market? How's their pricing? Have you hung around for a few hours yet and watched their flow of customers?   
 

[kori]

I’m not sure that the Gozney Dome is the best choice, I think you can probably save some cash with other options that may give you better performance, I’d suggest going into the Pizza Oven section of the forum and doing some research and/or post some questions regarding what you are planning on doing. Just my 2 cents.

[papayaperson]

I want to do a mobile pizza catering business.  What this means is doing public events (fairs, Festivals) and private ( weddings, birthday parties).  I don't have a lot of money to go big right away like a food truck or trailer.  So I was thinking if I only have several thousand dollars to blow on my pizza set up, then I could shoot for farmers markets.  I would buy a 10X10 tent, and pizza oven (Gozney Dome $2,000.00), a freezer unit for sales. 

My plan is to make dough freeze it and bottle sauce to sell at farmers market along with pizzas made from said dough and sauce.

My questions is has anyone out there done farmers markets? Can you make enough money at them to save up and grow to something more? Or are they simply a way to get the word out and get some experience?   Please let me know a realistic approximation of how much money one can expect to make at a farmers market selling pizza?

Started at Farmers Markets and did them for 6 years and now have a brick & mortar. We'd be nothing without the community we built at farmers markets and if we went straight into brick & mortar that would've been super risky. Markets are a decent revenue source with low overhead, albeit labor intensive with the setting up, breaking down & transportation. Amazing way to build your brand/learn. Some markets starting out we would sell on the lower end of 50 pies, we then grew to doing 300 in a singular market and selling out every Sunday. Really depends on the market fit and how much foot traffic that market gets.