Here's a farmers' market week in miniature.
Monday: someone finds you online and asks if you'll be at the market on Saturday. You say yes. They say they'll grab a jar of your hot honey. You make a mental note, because there's nowhere else to put it.
Tuesday: two more people ask. One specifically wants the rosemary one. You add it to the notes app.
Wednesday: you decide how much to make. You have three vague promises, no pickup times and nothing in writing. You guess.
Saturday: one of the three shows up. Nobody mentions the rosemary again. The regular honey sells out by ten, and you drive home with six jars of rosemary.
Then it happens again the next week.
The problem isn't your planning
Markets reward vendors who bring the right amount of the right things. But the usual way to take pre-orders (DMs, a Google Form, a notebook) gives you promises, not orders. Some vendors stop taking pre-orders altogether because it isn't worth the chaos.
What you need is simple: buyers commit to a specific item and a specific pickup time before Saturday, so you know what to make.
How it works on TrulyServd
Add the market as a pickup location. You can have more than one: your home, a market stall, a pop-up spot. Each location has an area label buyers see before ordering. The exact address is only shown once an order is confirmed.
Set your market hours. In your weekly hours, mark Saturday as open, set when you'll be cooking and when you'll be handing off at the stall, and pick the market as that day's pickup location. Working somewhere else one particular Saturday? Override that date without touching the rest of your week.
Add each item with its lead time. Buyers only see pickup slots that leave you enough working time to make it.
Plan your portions. Say how many jars of each variety you'll bring. You can plan today and the next several working days, and copy today's plan forward. Orders for a planned day confirm themselves until that day sells out. For a day you haven't planned, orders come in as pre-orders, and you accept or decline each one.
Watch the week fill up. Your kitchen dashboard shows the week ahead, with each day's booked portions against what you planned, so you can see the weekend coming together days in advance.
On Saturday you bring what's been ordered plus whatever you want for walk-ins. Buyers collect their order in the slot they chose and pay you directly, with cash or Interac e-Transfer.
No DMs, no guessing, no box of rosemary honey in the car.