Selling in person

Supplements sell less naturally in person than food does, because the thing being bought is a claim rather than a taste.

A harder sell than it looks

A customer at a market can taste a spice or smell a soap. They cannot evaluate a supplement at all except by reading the panel and deciding whether to believe you.

Which means the in-person channel works differently here: it is a conversation about ingredients, dosing and testing rather than a sensory demonstration, and it suits somebody who enjoys explaining.

Samples are a regulatory question

Handing out servings of a supplement is not the same as offering a taste of jam. You are providing a dose of an active substance to somebody whose health, medication and sensitivities you do not know.

If you do it, do it as sealed single-serve sachets with the full label information, not scooped from an open tub. Scooping from an open tub at a market is also the worst possible environment for a hygroscopic powder.

Flavor samples mixed in water are the common practice and they still carry the full labeling and claim obligations.

What the stall needs

Product out of direct sun and heat, because both degrade actives. The full panel readable, because people will want to read it. Your insurance certificate, which most markets require. And prices per serving as well as per tub, because that is how this category is compared.

What it teaches you

Which questions people actually ask, which is usually about dose, mixability and what it tastes like rather than about the things brands write about.

And which objections recur, which tells you what your product page has to answer. Write them down at the end of the day; the pattern across several markets is the useful thing.

References