Gentlemen, Start Your Markets!

This upcoming week, the "prime season" farmers markets get into full swing. The West End Farmers Market did surprisingly well last Saturday. Actually, it's not so surprising, given that the market owner, Kris Riley, and her staff did such a fantastic job with PR in the month leading up to opening day.

You will be able to find our authentic Italian fresh pasta and sauces at the following locations:

• The store, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays 9:00am - 7:00pm
• Ukrop's deli at The Village Patterson & Three Chopt
• Fall Line Farms co-op, various pick-up locations around Richmond
• South of the James Farmers Market, Saturday AM
• St. Stephen's Farmers Market, Saturday AM
• West End Farmers Market, Wednesday & Saturday AM
• Lakeside Farmers Market (c/o Rural Virginia Market CSA), Saturday
• Bryan Park Farmers Market, Tuesday PM
• Byrd House Farmers Market (c/o Rural Virginia Market CSA), Tuesday PM
• Alexandria Old Town Farmers Market, Saturday AM
• Falls Church Farmers Market, Saturday AM
• Arlington Courthouse Farmers Market, Saturday AM
• Williamsburg Farmers Market, Saturday AM
• Yorktown Farmers Market, Saturday AM
• Foggy Bottom (D.C.) Farmers Market, Wednesday PM

New Business Model Working...Sort Of

At the beginning of the year, we flipped our business model on its head: instead of doing 90% retail storefront and 10% farmers markets, we're now devoting 90% of our efforts to farmers markets. This has been met with mixed reviews by our regular customers, who would like to find our store open six days a week. However, all of them understand that this is the only way we could stay in business, since store attendence dropped off as the economy worsened in the last half of 2008. The local paper also printed a short article about us titled, "Cavanna Pasta Closing," which precipitated the drop-off. To paraphrase Mark Twain, "Reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated."

We're now open just Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, plus whenever we happen to be at the store and turn on the OPEN sign.