What sells well at village fetes?

tpsjrm

Hi All, I'm working with a few others in the village, to re-start the village fete. One of the things we want to put on is a 'Hand Made' stall. So there will be cakes, of course, and jams, but do any of you have experience of this sort of stall? What sells well? And of course, what is cheap to make that sells well? I'm a dab hand at making cards, so that's one thing we will try, but what else would be good?

Any thoughts would be very welcome.

Forgot to say, all our proceeds are being split between the village church and the community centre, so it's all in a good cause.

moo2moo

The bad news is not a lot. At things like that you find that you barely break even on the cost of materials if you are lucky. The loophole in this is to get the local school involved, or Brownies, or Scouts, anything that a child makes that are on sale will sell to that particular childs parents purely because the child talks them into it. More so if it involves sweets. Eg. Jam jar decorated as a snowman and filled with sweets. Prize to the best one and jars sold/ auctioned / tombola'd off after.People will pull faces at being asked to pay more than 50p for a homemde card though they'd happily pay 4 times this for a naff shop bought one.

They will however gamble away everything they have, especially the kids so you can shift absolutely anything via a tombola, even a teddy tombola, theres the bottle version with bottles, mostly empty, attached to a piece of string, pull a string to win a prize. Food and alcohol are always the best money makers, even if its Pimms or cheap beer. Face painting is also great as are bouncy castles (check you hire one with public liability insurance) and coconut shys. Get all your local groups involved, each additional group brings additional supporters and money. Ask the Brownies and the Cubs and the bowling team to organise a stall and tell them they can have 50-75% of the proceeds, bit of an incentive to them to put some effort in and a bit of extra income for your fundraising with minimal effort.

To guarantee covering your outlay invite along all your local traders, by this I mean Phoenix Cards, Usbourne Books, even the Avon lady. Charge them all a fixed cost per stall eg. £15 each, 4 of them should be enough to cover your bouncy castle hire (or anything else). Ask local businesses to sponser a stall (anything from £10 to £50) in return for advertising on it and a mention in the newspaper. This then gives you the money to cover the initial purchase of catering items and anything else you may need.

Raffles are another great idea, sell the tickets at the entrance and that ensures almost everyone buys them. You could sell them in advance but you'd have to register with the council lotteries dept, it may be easier to do this via the local Pre-School who are probably already signed up to this.

Other than that it requires lots of time, lots of effort and twice as may people to help on the day as you first thought! Good luck with it. You'll have a great time.

Sallys_Savings

I'd agree with above.

Firstly try and get as many people involved as possible. How about the village pub?...local businesses..brownies/scouts, dance groups, schools, nurseries etc.

Try to get as many donations as possible..i.e. free hair cut, mot, meal for two etc. as these can be used for raffle prizes as well as game prizes.

Ask around other local villages/towns/charity running groups..i.e. rotary, round table as they often have items you can borrow or which they normally use and I'm sure they'd lend them to you.

How about a crockery smash?....make sure that you have a large background screen to smash it against. Just set up a large table and boxes to stack all the crockery on (we collected this after car boots that no body wanted as well as donations) Then give certain amount of balls to each person and let them smash away.

BBQ - always gos down really well whatever the weather, could you borrow some from a few people, borrow large ones from the pub/football club/ etc.

Bowling game (perhaps a bowling club may run this for you?).....A piece/or pieces of wood with arches cut out, each arch has an amount at the top of it. This is the amount you can score once the bowling ball has gone through. This can be hugely popular. The highest score of the day wins the prize, we normally do a childrens version too to run beside it too.

Skittles....use bales of straw to corner it off..ask around to see if you can borrow some from another village?..charity group. My sisters village did this and the butcher gave half a pig as a prize.

continued.....

Sallys_Savings

just got carried away and then realised you asked about homemade products.

Items I've made in the past are;

Sewing
Fabric doorstops (search on ebay and you'll see some examples)
Wheat heat/cool bags made in pretty fabrics
Aprons

Relishs/jams/cakes etc
Pickle onions..make sweet, normal and chilli
Bbq relish (look on the bbc website or the old style board for some ideas)
Apple pies (or any fruit pie) (people tend to just make cakes and this went down a storm at one fete we held)

How about an old fashioned sweet stall...selling homemade fudge, toffee apples, shortbread biccies, coconut ice etc. You can decorate the stall with red and white gingham fabric, perhaps fabric bunting?

stilernin

I notice that no one has mentioned plants.

You could charge you local allotment association for having a stall, or with enough notice all the gardeners amongst you could take cuttings or bring on spare seedlings. Fruit and veg can also be sold. Just think of the price of rhubarb in Tesco and most allomenteers have it growing like a weed.

I know at our local mid-June fete this stall has a queue before it opens.

earthmother

moo2moo wrote: »

Ask local businesses to sponser a stall (anything from £10 to £50) in return for advertising on it and a mention in the newspaper.

Our local Building Society pays our school something in the region of £30 to display their banner on the front fence the week before a fair or fete - it basically says 'fete here next xxx' with the BS logo plastered across it.

I've also seen mentioned on other threads where a local Estate Agent has got involved by putting up their 'for sale' boards at various (parents) properties, but instead of 'for sale' it will say 'fete at xxx on xxx' - they also pay per board. We've not tried this one yet, but I am going to mention it at the next PTA meeting.

rosekitten

everything everyone has mentioned above
theres always kids wandering round with
loose change,lots in pennies & 5p,10p
what about cheap little cakes sweets
10p mixes are good sellers,chupa lollies etc.
as extra side lines.

A lucky dip,we did this as an extra when
we first did a local Summer fair,it escalated
each year as it was such a good crowd puller
to the stall,we just had laundry baskets
at the front and side of the stall.Lucky dips
for girls boys mums dads dogs cats babies
toddlers etc.20p a dip and always managed
to sell the lot.

There are always offers on sweets
in the likes of Woolworths etc.they
often have their Chuppa bags of lollies
on b1g1free and they work out really
cheap often cheaper than buying wholesale
and are really popular

little home made fairy cakes &
iced cakes baked in large square tin
cut into little cubes

cans coca cola 50p
if its hot weather you will sell
lots of cold drinks,borrow a paddling
pool fill with cold water and put all your
cans in to keep them cool.

.

Pennylane

I normally try to be VERY positive about things like this but I agree with Moomoo really. People really do want things for NOTHING these days.

You might do a bit better and get rather more interest since you say you are trying to re-start a village fete. People complain that there is no "life" in villages but they do sweet FA to help with anything that goes on. :eek: Most places have a little "core" of people who are willing to get involved in various things but you try getting anyone else to help!!

I think craft items really do have to be BEAUTIFULLY made & presented to sell. People think nothing of going in a posh gift shop and buying (say) a card for £3.50 but ask £1 at a fete and they almost run!!:mad:

Ideas - lavender bags, cards, scented items, padded coathangers (but they must be VERY special) baskets of new cosmetic bits (donated) trendy knitted small knitted toys. Hope it goes OK.

rosekitten

I know its lovely to be able to sell
goods at a good or better than good
price.

I suppose mines a pile it high sell it
cheap idea.But have had great success
doing this.Keep everything affordable
and match it to your customer base
and you wont go far wrong.

We have made more from the 10p
to 50p sales than we made from
anything else.

A fete is meant to be an affordable
day out for the local families.
You get a mix of types but the biggest
spenders overall are the ones on a
smaller budget.as they go on everything
raffles,tombola,lucky dips,food.

Dont forget to have a bric a brac
stall with a clothes rail selling cheap
secondhand clothes.

tpsjrm

What a wonderful lot you are. Thank you so much for all your thoughts on this. Yes Pennylane, we have already found out that very few people will volunteer to get involved with helping, even though a village questionnaire showed that over 85% wanted the fete re-started.

We wrote out to all 22 organisations that use the village community centre, but only 5 have responded positively, and those are mostly the golden oldies. The Pensioners Club are going to run bingo sessions and the WI are doing the catering.
Not sure if that will stretch to a bar or not. :beer:

The Garden Club are going to run a plant stall, which should be popular. The village Allotment Assoc only started in December, so I don't think we can expect any produce from them this time.

Such a shame though that none of the youth organisations want to get involved. We had planned quite a bit for that age range - face painting, silly races etc. We will still do that, of course, and hope that the clubs will get involved next year, when they see what fun it can be.

I like the idea of getting building societies and estate agents to do the advertising for us. We will definitely be trying that. And also sending begging letters out to businesses to get prizes for the raffle or stalls. And all your thoughts about different ways of getting money out of pockets and purses will be passed on. There were some suggestions for stalls that we certainly hadn't thought of - so well done all of you. :T Thanks so much. Fingers crossed that we recruit loads more volunteers before the day!

fesdufun

I can't remember where I read it - probably on here - someone was asking about raffles and I saw one reply in particular that I thought was a good idea.

They wrote to local businesses asking for donations for the raffle and said that would phone on a certain date. I suppose the business can still say no but hopefully they would be more likely to say yes on the phone and you can arrange with them directly re. collection of prize. This cuts down the work for them and you and seems a more personal approach to me.

At my school fete they had a hunt the mouse competition. 20 numbered mice were hidden on the stalls and around the grounds. Children paid 20p to enter and got a sweet when they returned their sheet with the colour of the mice for each number. My kids loved it and it meant we went around all the stalls. I don't think anyone worried whether the answers were right you just swapped a sheet for a sweet.

Good luck