The tasty crunch of sweet corn is just a couple of clicks away for folks outside of the Midwest thanks to some Iowa entrepreneurs.The golden, buttery bounty seems be everywhere in Iowa — in grocery stores and on street corners being sold out of the backs of pickups. But since the craving for sweet corn knows no state boundaries, Fred Vogel, of Adair, has set up a new sort of sweet corn stand on the Internet auction site eBay.Vogel said he’s gotten requests for dozens of ears from sweet corn fans as far away as Alaska and Hawaii.”Iowa’s sweet corn really is world-famous,” he said. “You don’t have to sell these people on that. Very few people even ask us how good it is.”Such online pitches to customers for specialty produce and meat are being used more and more, said Ray Hansen, a value-added agriculture specialist with Iowa State University Extension. When it comes to sweet corn, he said producers are selling sweet nostalgia to former residents.”It dovetails perfectly with the online purchasing craze,” Hansen said. “They’re out there buying that memory.”Vogel, a Waterloo native, helped a friend open a steakhouse in Adair, called Smiley’s Steakhouse, and planted an acre-and-a-half plot of sweet corn near the restaurant. With his experience selling other products on eBay, Vogel said he came up with the idea to sell their produce on the online auction site as well.
USATODAY.com - Internet savvy Iowan takes corn sales to eBay
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