Different factors
offered the opportunity to revalue the retail sale of grocery products from the farms, over the last years; this is certainly not
a new trend but, because of the deep changes in society, it was remarkably reduced. The renewed interest towards this form
of trading can be re-conducted to a series of factors relative to both the request – typical, local, home-made food – and to
the offer – in most cases linked to the problem of firms in interfacing with the organised large distribution. Considering
the lack of significant empirical literature on the issue of retail sales, the present research offers a fundamentally
explorative character, finalised to lining out the principal characteristics of the phenomena through the quantification of
the structural dimension of retail sales and the qualification of professional and personal profiles of employees and
families involved in the business, the specifications about the exercise modalities of retail sales, the perspectives and
needs, in terms of assistance and formation. The retail sale business is, in at least half of the cases examined in Friuli
Venezia Giulia (where specific exclusive facilities for this trade were not yet organised), an experimental activity on
which the operative lines must still be traced. The problem of agricultural policies is how to support such interest and
supply aid in the process of transformation of retail sale from an experimental activity to a structural one
