Local guides · Post 34
Market day in Ceredigion: the takings that never get written down
For market traders and small producers in Ceredigion: how to know what actually sold on market day, and what the guesswork costs you now.
A Saturday stall in Cardigan. The van is loaded before light, the bread and the cheese go out, and by four o'clock the crates are half empty. The takings go in a bag. By Tuesday the detail has gone with them. Nobody wrote down which loaf sold out by eleven, or whether the chutney moved at all.
That is the loop: market day stock and takings. It runs the same way at the Monday market in Lampeter, at Aberaeron, and at Aberystwyth on its market days. Stock goes out and money comes in, and the only record is a total in a pocket.
So the next market is planned from memory. You make more of what you think sold, and less of what you might have sold. The price list stays as it is because there is nothing to check it against. The shoebox of receipts comes out at the end of the month, if it comes out at all.
The maths (a sketch, not a client figure)
Take the time after each market spent working out what went and what to make next. The figures below are assumptions, not a measurement.
- × 1 hour a week (assumed) = the sorting and the remembering
- × £25 an hour (assumed) = £25 a week
- × 46 trading weeks (assumed) = £1,150 a year
That is the cost of not writing it down at the stall. The same page, filled in during the day, cuts the sorting to a few minutes before the next market.
Score it: the three checks
- Hours. An hour a week, most of it spent trying to remember a day that has already gone. It clears the bar because those hours are regular and they are already being spent.
- Repeat. The page has the same shape every time: what came in, what sold, what went home and what the day took. If the pattern fits on one written page, the drafts can be prepared for you.
- Risk-if-wrong. A missed line on a make list costs a tray of buns. A wrong price or a wrong takings figure costs money and trust. That is why the pricing decision and the final numbers stay with a person.
Try one thing this week (free)
Take one sheet of paper to the next market and split it down the middle. On the left, write every line you bring and its price. On the right, put a tick each time one sells. Add the total at the bottom of the day. By Friday you will know what actually sold and what you carried home, and that page is the start of everything else.
Where a person stays
The page can be prepared for you before each market, built from the lines you took last time and the stock you plan to carry. The day's takings can be added up for you, the best sellers sorted, and a make list drafted for the next market. What stays human is the part that carries the judgement: what to charge and what to stop making. A named person reads the draft, changes it when the week has moved on, and approves it. Nothing reaches a customer, a supplier or an accountant until that approval has happened, and financial work stays approval-only, always.
FAQ
Just what sold and the price. If the page is laid out before you go, two minutes at the end of the day is enough.
The page still does the job. Mark how each sale was paid so the day's total can be checked against the card reader and the cash tin.
Write it down anyway. A wet Saturday in Cardigan or a quiet Monday in Lampeter is useful next year, because you can see what you took and whether the pitch earns its place.
No. One written page comes first. If you want to measure the week before you decide anything, the free time leak tracker at tishka.ai/tracker logs it.
The £499 diagnostic. One fixed fee: a one-hour call, a written report, and a 30-minute follow-up that ranks what to build first. 5 hours a week found or a full refund, and the fee credits in full against any build.