Thanks to the farmers market in Botnang for hosting me last Saturday! It was great meeting new people and hearing their feedback.
This coming Saturday I’ll be back at my regular spot in Heslach at the Bihlplatz market.
It’s made out of strawberries, beets, chia seeds, honey, and lemon juice. It’s chewy like a fruit roll-up; the chia seeds give it some crunch; the lemon gives it some zing.
It’s available Saturdays at the farmers market.
Remember the jerky mishap? A similar thing happened again this week! This time it wasn’t the jerky though, and I can’t blame it on a math error. We’ve been finalizing a brand new product, and food is just so dang unpredictable. So now we have a huge batch of not-perfect new product.
If I can recover before the end of the week, you can come taste it at the farmers market on Saturday. See you there!
When I visited Stuttgart almost exactly eight years ago, the gutters were overflowing with garbage and streamers. Since everything was weird and European, I just assumed this was probably normal too.
After eight years of living here, the weird European things now feel a lot like home. So when I find the streets full of garbage and streamers, it can only mean one thing: Fasching is here! Fasching is the German celebration of Karneval. Everyone dresses up in costumes, drinks a lot, binges on jelly donuts, and goes to parades.
Costumes, drunkenness, jelly donuts, and parades are all some of my least favorite things. However, Fasching has a special place in my memory because it reminds me that another year has passed since the beginning of this weird adventure in Germany.
Visit us on our Facebook page!
I’m not a big social media user. I actually had to google “what is a Facebook page?” after people kept telling me to set up a Facebook page for Peapod. It turns out that Facebook pages and Facebook profiles are actually different things. But now we have one! I need a teenager to show me how to do these things.
During the slower times at the farmers market, I sometimes chat with the people running the neighboring stands. I like hearing about their businesses.
This past weekend, I learned how many typical vegetable stands run their businesses. It was fascinating!
For readers not familiar with German farmers markets, these vegetable stands appear at basically every farmers market in every German city. They have big plastic bins with colorful, carefully arranged produce which usually looks fresh and enticing. Customers are willing to pay a premium for this produce.
It’s not uncommon for people to say things like, “I buy my produce at the farmers market because the quality is just so much better than at the grocery store.”
I had never specifically inquired about the sourcing or distribution of the produce. I just assumed it must be somehow superior. Otherwise, why would people pay more? Maybe it was regional? Maybe it was sold directly from the farm to the customers? Maybe it was organically grown?
It turns out that the produce sold at the farmers market is purchased from large distributors. It comes from countries all over the world, and because of the supply chain, it’s probably not particularly fresh. After buying in bulk from distributors, the people running the stands arrange their merchandise nicely and then mark up the price for a nice profit.
It sounds exactly the same as a normal grocery store!
This just doesn’t make any sense. Why do people pay more for produce at the farmers market? They’re certainly not all being tricked? Certainly not thrifty, southern Germans who pride themselves on buying things of high quality? Somebody please help me understand!
Our line of Knacks Green Beans is now available in our online shop. We have two flavors. Check them out!
The Knacks made their debut yesterday at the farmers market at Bihlplatz. The feedback from customers was overwhelmingly positive, and we even sold out of the chili flavor!
Earlier that morning, while I was hauling a cart full of Peapod stuff through the dark streets, onto the U-bahn, and over to the farmers market, I have to admit that I had my doubts. But starting Peapod has been a series of exercises in pushing through doubts. So I pushed through again, and what a pleasant surprise it was.
Just in time for Peapod to open a stand at the farmers market, nonstop rain is coming to Stuttgart.
Find us Saturday mornings at the Bihlplatz farmers market!
When we started Peapod last year, there were a million things to do all at once. Our biggest priorities were (and still are) getting our products out to customers and hearing their feedback. It’s been a crazy whirlwind of learning and doing.
Finally, I’ve taken some time to tidy up things behind the scenes. One priority was getting our bookkeeping in order. It was actually really fun. It helps that I secretly love making spreadsheets.
Because Peapod is registered as a small business (Kleinunternehmen), the bookkeeping required by the government is pretty simple. There is basically just one form, called the EÜR (Einnahmenüberschussrechnung), which has to be filled out at tax time. It shows the company’s income and expenditures. It’s important to update these numbers on a regular basis though so that everything is compiled by tax time.
It was also important to me to develop a quick, easy way to see our finances at a glance.
So what better excuse to make a neat set of spreadsheets! I did a bunch of reading and research about the best way to structure everything. Now I can input our income into one sheet and our expenditures into another sheet, and some simple functions do the rest of the work. Our yearly tax information generates itself, and our monthly/yearly finances are output in simple, understandable tables.
Bookkeeping isn’t so scary after all.
The Peapod test kitchen has been cooking up a storm. After many months of experimenting, tasting, and refining, we’re ready to share a new line with you!
Over the next few weeks, we will introduce a spiced, crispy, delicious, chip-like snack made from green beans. They will be available in a few different flavors. One of my favorites is coated in coconut oil and then salted and spiced.
We worked hard to add this option to our lineup. It wasn’t easy finding a suitable vegetable and developing recipes which met all of the tough criteria.
One big obstacle was the seasonality of produce. Not only does price fluctuate a lot with season, but the quality of the product in the off-season is often far inferior to the quality in-season. Maybe in the summertime we will share some of our recipes with tomatoes and strawberries. In the wintertime they’re just not as delicious.
Another big obstacle was the handling of the produce. Cooking for family and friends is quite different from producing food at scale. We needed a vegetable which was production-friendly through all steps of preparation, from cleaning to dehydration to packaging. Green beans fared well.
We’re putting the finishing touches on packaging and labeling. You’ll find the green beans in our online store soon.
