A farm shop, or "farm stand" in the United States, is a type of

retail outlet Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and t ...

which usually sells produce directly from a

farm A farm (also called an agricultural holding) is an area of land that is devoted primarily to agricultural processes with the primary objective of producing food and other crops; it is the basic facility in food production. The name is used fo ...

. Some farm shops also resell related goods such as locally produced groceries, foods, drinks and

delicatessen Traditionally, a delicatessen or deli is a retail establishment that sells a selection of fine, exotic, or foreign prepared foods. Delicatessen originated in Germany (original: ) during the 18th century and spread to the United States in the m ...

products. In developed countries the number of farm shops is increasing as farms seek to diversify their sources of income in the face of financial pressures. Direct sales to the consumer allow farmers to retain a larger portion of the resulting profit than they can obtain by selling to a wholesaler or larger reseller. Many farm shops sell higher-margin premium goods such as organic produce of known local provenance in order to differentiate their offerings from those in supermarkets. Larger farm shops may target the leisure-shopping market,https://dspace.stir.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/1893/665/1/paddisonrural.pdf (PDF) offering tea-rooms, gift shops and rural lifestyle products. In recent years, especially in strongly-agrarian regions and countries such as the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

, farm shops are commonly associated with

garden centre A garden centre (Commonwealth English spelling; U.S. nursery or garden center) is a retail operation that sells plants and related products for the domestic garden as its primary business. It is a development from the concept of the retail plant n ...

s and nurseries. Often, these garden centres provide a significant amount of support for the farm shop by attracting customers, and vice versa.

References

{{Authority control Food retailing

See also

References