Adventuring in Hood River

We went out to look at orchard farms in Hood River, Oregon today even though it was very rainy and a bit blustery. Had a great time and learn a bit more about what we thought might work at our farm. Nearly as I can tell there is nothing like what we wish to build our in the are where we are building; but the stuff we hope to build is working well around Hood River.

This is Draper Girls. The first place we went to and probably the best name. They had a homey feel and did the best job selling apples. because they put little dishes of cut produce on top of the bins. They had no heat, on a cold day, and no lights or places to sit. The gaps between the temporary rain shelters dripped horribly. But they had a thriving business and sold hot cider and donuts as well as apples of fifteen varieties and pears.

Draper Girls had a few antiques
and a bunch of canned goods. 

The best apple they had. $1.50 a pound.

About twenty parking spaces at Draper Girls, good turnover because nobody was there for more than fifteen minutes.

Probably the best looking barn store was Packer Orchards. They had thirty parking spaces and the turnover was a bit slower owing to massive grazing opportunities.  Under the white canopy was a jelly and jam tasting space. Two tables of people dipping and spreading.

This was the cookie display with tubs of cookie bits to try.
$1.50 for a five inch cookie, good quality too.

The pies were expensive.

A great display space with plenty of traffic flow space.
The way they tagged the jars was a favorite.
Mixing in the produce with the products and findings worked well too. 

This is a display from another farm store.
Probably more effective but the prices were very high.

Comparing this to my favorite store, what we get is a homey looking thing
which used the space well,  the same tag schema as Packer Orchards, 
better prices, and overall did a better job at retail marketing.

Packer had some seating areas.
Nothing that would make people sit down.

They also used table space well.

This was Isikawa Family farm. Est. 1911
By far the most commercial of the places we visited. Loads of parking.

Perhaps the best marketing as well, since they got us there with promises of hard cider and heirloom apple tasting. The place was packed with pretty girl staff and people buying large bags of apples. They had a great deal of vegetable produce as well as beans and preserves.

But other than the produce, they were doing a much bigger

scale project than we are. Their focus is getting people there.

The best approximation of what we wish to build has no uPick orchard, strange for the area;
but they had food, seating, music, and a ton of things to see and do.

Apple Valley Farm-store had everything we would want except for the produce.

They had a cool farmhouse.

Great retail displays with pretty good product placements

And prices that seemed about right.

With exceptional variety.

Overall it was a nice fall day with a long drive up the gorge. We bought some great apples and drank a bit of the cider we found there as well.

Most of the stores had product, but it was fairly easy to tell that retail wasn't the primary focus for most of them. A few had customer involvement programs, some had gift box shipping. All had home made products and something like garage sale antiques. None had the scope of products we hope to have.

What all shared was an area which celebrated it's produce and produced a map cooperatively which people were traveling out of Portland to follow. Even on a fairly sucky day, there was great foot traffic.