Sommerfeldt Farms · 1093 S. Benton Center Rd, Benton Harbor MI · menu captured 14 Sep 2026
Their entire stand prices peppers by the piece. Every wholesale buyer — canner, sauce maker, distributor — buys by the pound. This converts one into the other so a price can be quoted on a phone call.
Pod weights below are estimates, not measurements. Weigh ten pods of each variety on the stand scale, average them, and type the real number into the weight column. Every figure to the right recalculates. Until those numbers are real, do not quote a buyer.
Volume buyers expect a break. 30–40% off the stand price is a normal opening position.
Vented case weight. Wholesale sells by the case, never loose.
| Variety | As marked | Avg pod (g) | Pods / lb | Retail $/lb | Wholesale $/lb | Per case |
|---|
Retail $/lb is what the stand already realizes at the marked price. Wholesale $/lb is that figure less the discount above — never quote below this or the sale goes backward. Per case is the wholesale rate times the case weight — the number you actually quote.
All three are visible in the photographs. All three are fixable with chalk.
The chalkboard reads Canner Tomato $10.00 / 10 lb. Two feet away, a hand-lettered sign over stacked cases reads Canners $16.00 each — and those cases are printed NET WT 25 LBS.
Any customer who does the arithmetic buys the case. Anyone who doesn't overpays by a third. Neither outcome is intentional pricing.
What it actually means: they already have a wholesale SKU. The 25 lb case at $0.64/lb is a real volume price — they just don't call it one, don't advertise it, and don't offer it to anyone who isn't standing in the barn. That is the easiest wholesale product to launch because it already exists.
The sign reads Ghost or Reaper $1.00 each. A ripe Ghost pod runs roughly twice the weight of a Reaper pod. Same price per piece means the realized price per pound is roughly double on Reapers.
That is either a discount on Reaper or a premium on Ghost depending which direction you correct it — but it cannot be right in both directions at once. Split the sign. Reaper is the rarer, more marketable name and carries the higher price.
Twenty-two photographs of signage, and not one chalkboard, banner, poster or shelf talker uses the word. The only third-party marketing material visible is Michigan Apples point-of-sale from Pure Michigan.
This has to be settled before any wholesale copy goes out. If the farm holds USDA organic certification, the certificate number belongs on the wholesale page and it is a major selling point to every sauce maker on the target list. If it does not hold certification, the word cannot appear in any material we produce — that is federally regulated language, and a claim on a sell sheet is a different exposure than a word spoken in a barn.
Ask them directly: certified, transitioning, or simply grown without sprays? All three are sellable. Only one of them is called organic.
Everything legible across the photographs. This is the real inventory — far wider than anything published online.
The stand carries at least twelve distinct pepper varieties across the full heat range — Reaper and Ghost at the top, then habanero, serrano, jalapeño, poblano, Anaheim, cubanelle, hot banana, sweet banana, sweet Italian and bell. That is not a farm with a few hot peppers by the register. That is a pepper program with a complete ladder, and it is the single most sellable thing on the property.
A sauce maker does not want one variety. They want a heat ladder from one supplier on one invoice — mild base, mid heat, and a superhot top note. Sommerfeldt can fill an entire recipe from a single field, and nobody outside Berrien County knows it.
The other thing worth naming: the salsa basket at $7.00 with a printed recipe card is already a working value-added bundle. Same mechanic, different audience — three Reapers, three Ghosts, a habanero, a fermenting instruction card and a heat warning, priced at $15. The template is built and proven. It just needs the hot version.