Pricing puzzle

Dear bakers,

I have been observing a very puzzling trend and wanted to know if customers in other cities are doing likewise.

Mom and I rent tables at church flea markets to sell baking. Mom is the cookie expert and is particular that all baking is wrapped. She puts together tins of cookies (sometimes assorted, sometimes all one flavor) for a price. She will put 12-18 average-sized drop cookies on a [clean, never seen meat or fish] meat tray with a price of say $4. Larger shaped cookies get saran wrapped in a packet of 6 for $2. Prices and flavors are indicated on the package with stickers.

We have been doing this for a few years. For the past couple of months, potential customers are balking at the prices. They are under the impression the price is PER COOKIE. We have to explain over and over that the price is for the ENTIRE PACKAGE and there are x number of cookies in the package. "Oh no that's too many" and they walk away. This is a recurring problem with customers of all ages, genders, and ethnicities, but especially noticeable from children. One grandmother-granddaughter pair last year were convinced that a curly-looking dollar sign was an 8, and wondered why a package of cookies was priced at $83.00.

At our most common sale, we have become the only table exclusively devoted to food. Another lady, who had a bake table but seems to have given it up, sold all her cookies loose (large, bad tasting Subway-style cookies) for 75c each. We prefer not to do that and do NOT allow customers to break up existing packages.

while I'm sure we would all like to sell cookies for $4 EACH (and no I have not done so!) has anyone else had this problem, and how do you handle it?! I can't believe people can be this dumb!

Here's an example of our labelling. This was from a sale last year. We don't find it confusing at all. If anyone thinks the prices shown are per cookie, please pipe up!


(if this image link isn't working go to my gallery and look at the bake table photo)

Depending on the location, some places we do English-only labels and some have bilingual labels. We have not changed our labelling/packaging style, but tins have been downsized because anything over $5 is deemed too expensive by most of our customers. And if the stickers were any larger, they would obscure the food.

There was a period when we offered a baggie of two cookies for 50 cents. What we found was people would hum and haw over the choices, buy one baggie -- and nothing else. Whereas if the cheapest item you can buy is $1.50 or $2.00, the minimum sale suddenly goes up. And it makes our take much healthier.

Mom does not want to sell individually, partly for hygienic reasons and because the average cookie would be 25 cents. She wants to sell whole tins of cookies and bring in several dollars at once. And bring less food home!

As for "just for fun", well I do work full time (in I.T.) and mom is retired. Two sales per month, accessible by public transit (we don't drive) is about all we can manage. Our tables are 6 or 9 linear feet, so every square inch counts. I'm the salesgirl and the layout designer, I get paid in broken cookies.