our bird cam has been discovered…
spring market, new loyalty program
The spring / summer Manassas farmer’s market begins this week! The Thursday market starts April 8 at Harris Pavilion from 8am – 1pm (we will not be attending the Thursday markets). And the Saturday market starts April 10 at the commuter lot across from Baldwin Elementary from 8am – 1pm (we WILL be attending the Saturday markets, as always).
With the start of this new market season, we’re debuting our new “loyalty cards”. These are more or less standard gift cards… but with some incentives built in. Basically, if you choose to get one of these cards, each time money is added to the card, we will put an additional X% onto the card. And that percentage increases in relation to the amount of money added. The overall point being to encourage and reward customers who buy from us again and again. To simplify the point-of-sale mechanics, we’ve narrowed the deposit amounts to the following setup:
| amount customer pays | amount credited to card | % extra |
| $20 | $21 | 5% |
| $40 | $42 | 5% |
| $60 | $66 | 10% |
| $80 | $88 | 10% |
| $100 | $115 | 15% |
Some of you may remember that we used to have a loyalty program where we had a check-in sheet out on our table, and you’d check the box by your name each time you made a purchase…. When the pandemic hit, we couldn’t have “public use” pens out on the table, and tracking who was buying and who wasn’t (not knowing everyone by name) proved to be cumbersome, and we were hesitant to advertise it to newcomers, etc. Beginning April 10, this new loyalty card program effectively replaces that old check-in sheet program. We will have the cards available for anyone who wants to get one, and then you can use for any future purchases, adding money (via cash, check, credit, or SNAP tokens) per the above amounts as desired. We should note that, like most gift cards, these cards will not be redeemable or refundable.
Looking forward to starting the spring / summer market! We’ve been busy at the farm gearing up for the season. We have a 50-foot hoop house in the works that we’re hoping to complete before tomatoes go in the ground late April / early May. Planning to do cucumbers and eggplant in there, as well. And we’re experimenting with a cover crop of peas in the upper half of our garden. The peas will theoretically add nitrogen back into the soil as they grow, and then we’ll likely till them in later in the summer to make way for fall plantings. A lot going on!
A big thank you as always to all of our customers. We hope to see you at the market soon!