With all the excitement about the St. Paul farmers market, there has been a lot of worrying about how we’re going to handle a (much) bigger market. We’ve been slapping wheels on appliances and researching new Point Of Sale systems.
The time has come to commit ourselves to a new POS, and Square has won out. They don’t have a few features that would make selling meat much easier, but it’s good enough. There are new mobile-POS systems out there that are a little cheaper, but Square’s still has the most full-featured software and that’s what tipped the balance for us. We want sales reports, inventory and cashdrawer reports; Square is the only one that has ’em (that’s not murderously expensive).
So with the POS all sorted, it was time to make ourselves a nifty little cart to put everything on. We’re putting wheels on everything this year to make a nicer presentation at markets, so why not wheels for this too?
We grabbed the “small” wheels from the fridge and promptly got to building a 24″x36″ cart out of scrap lumber that we had lying about.
The cart incorporates a nice little spot for our cash-drawer that’s rigged up to the Square stand, we don’t want that running away on us.
I used up a few 2×4’s, 1×12’s, MDF, Baltic Birch Plywood and Luan scraps that I had laying around. This cart has about every different type of lumber known to man.
Up top we’ve got two little holes to get the Square stand all mounted and wired up.
It only takes a single specially-shaped USB cord, so we opted to keep the cord out of the way under the base.
For the sake of our future convenience (and/or sanity) there are two drawers and some extra space to store all the stuff you end up needing or wanting at a farmers market.
Our list of stuff goes something like this:
Sharpie markers and alcohol pads – for writing and erasing on our laminated price lists
Pens
Business cards & holder
Brochures & holder
Informational & recipe postcards
Price list & signage
Calculators
White duct tape
Double-sided foam “poster” tape
Trashcan
Insect repellant
Sunscreen
Hand warmers
Freezer gloves
Phone charger
First-Aid kit
Extra shopping bags
Speaking of shopping bags, I rigged up this beaut from a 2×4 with a few lengthwise cuts at about 15°. Its enough to hold a whole mess of shopping bags at the ready.
When it’s time to go home the bag-holder and everything else slides back out of the way.
The vegetable vendors have been jealous of how quickly we could pack-up our old setup. This is going to make it so much faster, we’ll be on the road home in no time.
